Verizon project shows viability of fuel cell power. (Energy Resources & Management).

Energy shortages and rising prices have put the need for better energy management on the front burner for building owners and managers. While fuel cell technology has long held the promise of greater energy efficiencies, until recently, the economics of employing fuel cells in large-scale applications was cost prohibitive. All that is soon to change.

In certain industries, fuel cell technology has advanced to a point where it can compete on a cost basis with other energy sources. And now a project being designed by Syska Hennessy for Verizon will prove that the technology is cost effective for large buildings. In fact, initial engineering studies concluded that the project cost would be recovered within five to six years, based on offset electric costs and recovered waste heat generated by the electric generating equipment.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical system that consumes fuel to produce an electrical current. It converts hydrogen into DC electricity, with heat and water as byproducts, via a chemical process, not through combustion. An integral inverter changes the DC current to alternating current for transmission into the facility's electrical distribution systems. Fuel cells offer the advantage of being environmentally friendly, with greatly reduced emissions to the atmosphere.

There are three types of fuel cells, classified by the type of electrolytes that produce the chemical process: phosphoric acid, proton-exchange membrane, or molten carbonate. For commercial real estate applications, the 200-kilowatt, 480-volt, three-phase phosphoric acid fuel cell is commercially available and has more than 1 million hours of operating experience. This fuel cell has an energy efficiency of 37-40% for power generation only, and can increase to more than 80% if the generated waste heat is used for facility heating/ cooling/process demands.

For a single 200-kilowatt cell, annual emission of objectionable pollutants is reduced by 40,000 pounds, and carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by more than 2.4 million pounds per year. Its primary drawback is its procurement cost (about $4,000 per kilowatt), but there are subsidies available from various government agencies to partially offset this.

After obtaining local permit approvals, Verizon plans to start installation of seven fuel cells manufactured by UTC Fuel Cells, a unit of United Technologies Corp, at their 332,000-SF facility in Garden City, N.Y. The fuel cells, which are expected to be fully operational in 2004, will work in parallel with four new natural-gas powered engine generators, totaling more than 4 megawatt of generating capacity.

The fuel cells and engine generators. will provide the electricity required for the entire facility; commercial electrical power and Verizon's existing turbine generators and batteries will remain as backups at achieve power reliability in excess of 99.999%.

This is the first time that a hybrid fuel cell/power generating system is being used and this facility will be the largest fuel cell deployment in the world. Syska Hennessy completed all the preliminary engineering and studies for the project under a subcontract with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is now designing the facility. Verizon is receiving technical and financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy and the State of New York in recognition of Verizon's contribution to implementing this environmentally- friendly plant.

Once the Verizon project is operational, the fuel cells and natural gas generators will produce enough electricity to power more than 400 homes. In addition, the fuel-cell system has the potential to eliminate from the atmosphere up to 12 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually that would have resulted from commercial power generation.

The scope of this project will demonstrate that fuel cell technology can be used cost effectively at a large facility. In all likelihood, this effort will be a catalyst for similar fuel cell deployments at commercial and industrial facilities.