Cellkraft has chosen to divide its fuel cell and humidity/steam activities into two separate business areas in order to best cater for the different customer needs and meet the growing customer base. As part of this focusing, the business areas will have separate newsletters so specific customers can better relate to the news.

Highlights from Customer Trials

In two different customer trials, two different aspects of start-up reliability are examined.

In October, a period of 6 months of standby ended with a simulated grid loss in a test at TeliaSonera. This is the longest period of standby in the test so far. The fuel cell started up and powered the telecom station during the grid loss and then got back into standby mode. This may sound trivial, but fact is that many Cellkraft competitors recommend that their back-up fuel cells are run on a regular basis. Cellkraft has put a large effort to develop a start-up algorithm that ensures that start-up will succeed no matter for how long time the fuel cell has been standing still. This test at TeliaSonera shows that the Cellkraft’s choice of strategy is possible and that Cellkraft has come far in this development.

In the testing at STRI AB for Svenska Kraftnät, the Swedish power grid utility, fuel cells are started up every three or six hours with some exceptions when the fuel cells are run for twelve hours continuously. During the autumn this test series exceeded 1000 start/stop cycles, with no noticeable degradation of performance.

Photo: Svenska Kraftnät testsite.

Photo: Telia testsite.

New Control System Features

Cellkraft’s new, fourth generation, control system was finalised by the end of last year. Most changes compared to the third generation were made to simplify assembly of a fuel cell system and are thus not noticeable to a customer. The most important new feature for a customer is the possibility to upgrade the control software remotely. With this feature it is possible to upgrade the firmware of Cellkraft fuel cells via direct modem connection, GSM/GPRS, Internet or locally by the customer.

Intelec Fair ’07

For the first time Cellkraft exhibited their fuel cells at the International Conference on Telecommunication Power, Intelec in Rome 30th September – 4th October ’07. Cellkraft exhibited the most compact back-up power system on the fair comprised by a S-2000 fuel cell, a SAFT Intentium™ battery and an Eltek Flatpack rectifier.  Cellkraft also demonstrated start-up and running of an S-2000 fuel cell at the Cellkraft premises in Stockholm remotely over the internet.