Siemens Westinghouse 100 kW SOFC System Passes One Year Operating Milestone.

Business Editors

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 1, 2000

Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation announced today that the world's largest operating solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) power system, the 100 kW SOFC cogeneration system located in Westervoort, the Netherlands, passed one year of total operating time, a critical milestone.

The SOFC system was supplied by Siemens Westinghouse in 1998 to EDB/ELSAM, a consortium of Dutch and Danish utilities.

&uot;On December 30, 1999 the total operating time of the 100 kW SOFC system reached 8760 hours, or one year,&uot; said Herman Verbeek, project manager for EnergieNed, the Federation of Energy Companies in the Netherlands, which manages the project for the EDB/ELSAM consortium. &uot;After an inspection period at Siemens Westinghouse, which followed a successful operation period of about 4300 hours, the system was restarted at the test site in Westervoort in March 1999. Since restart, the system has been operating well, and has operated consistently at an electrical efficiency of nearly 46%. We are very pleased with its performance and look forward to another year with the system operating well.&uot;

The system is currently supplying 110 kW to the local grid and 64 kW of hot water to the Westervoort district heating system. The emissions from the system are especially impressive with NOx, SOx, CO, and VHCs all measured below 1 ppm.

The unit normally operates unattended with visits one day a week to the site by technicians employed by the local utility, NUON, which operates the system for the EDB/ELSAM consortium. EDB is an acronym that refers to the Dutch energy distribution companies NUON, Essent, and ENECO, and the Federation EnergieNed. ELSAM is the partnership owned by the regional Danish utilities, Fynsvaerket, Nordjyllandsvaerket Midtkraft, Skaerbaekvaerket, Sonderjyllands Hojspaendingsvaerk and Vestkraft. Funding for the project was also provided by the Dutch government agency Novem, the US Department of Energy, and Siemens Westinghouse.

The SOFC system was fabricated at the Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Center located in Pittsburgh, Pa. To date, the system had a total operating time of 9500 hours, including the period of operation during the factory acceptance test conducted in Pittsburgh.

&uot;We are very pleased with the operation of the 100 kW system as a whole and the prototype pre-commercial cells in particular,&uot; said Nick Bartol, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Siemens Westinghouse. &uot;This gives us and our potential customers great confidence for the commercialization of solid oxide fuel cells as a distributed generation technology.&uot;

Siemens Westinghouse plans to commercialize SOFC cogeneration systems in the 250 kW to 1000 kW range in 2004. Also planned are SOFC/gas turbine hybrid power systems aimed at all-electric market segments, where the hot pressurized SOFC exhaust drives a gas turbine, and thereby achieves unprecedented electrical efficiencies as high as 60-70%. Siemens Westinghouse is developing SOFC technology under a cooperative agreement with the DOE, through its National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation is a Siemens Company headquartered in Orlando, Fla. Within Siemens' global Fossil Power Generation business, Siemens Westinghouse is the regional business division for the Americas and operates engineering and manufacturing centers in North America. In the U.S. and Canada, the company also is responsible for the Industrial Turbines, Instrumentation &Control, and Hydroelectric businesses.