AFC Energy Achieves Milestone Power Output from KORE Fuel Cell System in Germany
AFC Energy (AIM: AFC), the industrial fuel cell power company, is pleased to announce that following an intense and accelerated twelve month fuel cell development programme, it has successfully delivered gross electrical output in excess of 200kW at its KORE fuel cell power plant in Stade, Germany.
Highlights
The commissioning activities of the KORE system over the past five days concluding on 31 January, delivered a series of firsts for the technology with a summary of the key achievements for the AFC proprietary fuel cell cartridge and balance of plant including:
· In excess of 200kW of power produced from the fuel cell system
· The first time all three tiers of the KORE fuel cell system operated in parallel with each other to successfully dispatch power into the German power grid
· In excess of 1.3MW of power generated and sold into the grid under the Power Purchase Agreement agreed with Statdewerke Stade
· In excess of 10kW of power generated from multiple fuel cell stacks operating within the KORE against a design rating of 10kW per stack
· From a single tier of the KORE system (8 x fuel cell stacks), 83.3kW of power was generated (against a nameplate of 80kW for a single tier)
· From two tiers of the KORE system operating in parallel (16 x fuel cell stacks), a cumulative 158.4kW of power generated (against a nameplate of 160kW for two tiers)
· KORE system automation was fully demonstrated for the first time through the application of AFC proprietary software against previous manual trials
Importantly, the trial of the KORE fuel cell system in Germany last week follows an extensive work programme on the individual 101 fuel cell stack in December and January during which time significant design parameters were adjusted. These improvements resulted at one point in the 101 fuel cell stack achieving a gross power generation output of 11.7kW (against a 10kW design capacity) and a 9 fuel cell stack achieving an equivalent 14kW output (grossed up to 101 cell equivalent). The decision to delay commissioning activities in December was designed to provide sufficient time to implement a number of these changes to design parameters into the KORE module in Stade.
One of the key successes from trialling AFC's proprietary KORE fuel cell system this week is the vast quantity of operational data that has been acquired. This enables the team to fully assess and identify learnings to further enhance the fuel cell stack and fuel cell system, which at present is the largest alkaline fuel cell system operating in the world today.
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