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Manufacturing fuel cell stacks at Ceres
Fuel Cell technology developer Ceres Power has announced a partnership with Honda to further develop its solid oxide fuel cell stacks for a range of power generating applications.
The two year contract, which is the extension of an agreement with Honda originally made in October 2014, includes the involvement of an unnamed “third party” which will look at scaling-up the production processes for Ceres’ Steel Cell technology.
Ceres, which is based in Horsham, Sussex, was originally spun out of research conducted at Imperial College in 2001. Ceres’ fuel cells are 95% steel and use minimal amounts of expensive platinum and ceramics, to reduce their cost compared to other fuel cells.
However, the company has had problems commercialising the technology and has had to solve several engineering and manufacturing challenges, including improving the robustness of its fuel cells, which were found to be weakened when repeatedly switched on and off.
Phil Caldwell, chief executive of Ceres Power, said that the inclusion of manufacturing development in the agreement represents an important advancement in the relationship with Honda.
He said: “This latest agreement with Honda represents a huge endorsement of our Steel Cell technology, in the world’s most advanced fuel cell market.
“We are demonstrating that we can successfully deliver on our strategy of embedding our Steel Cell technology into a variety of different power products and markets with the world’s leading companies.”
Ceres has been pursuing a strategy of licensing its technology to major OEMs for a number of years, targeting domestic power generation markets in Asia, where governments are subsidising the purchase of domestic fuel cells, and the industrial power market for datacentres, in places like the US.
Ceres has a test bed manufacturing facility able to produce about 400 1 kW fuel cells a year and has previously said it sees its first volume manufacturing facility will most likely be in Asia.