The ene.field project is pleased to announce that Ceres Power, one of the world’s leading developers of low cost, next generation fuel cell technology, joined the ene.field project as a new partner. Ceres is beginning trials of its prototype home power systems – named SteelGen, in the UK this year in partnership with British Gas. Phil Caldwell, Ceres Power’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “We are delighted to join ene.field as we see this major European project as an important opportunity to deploy our innovative products and to get valuable insight into the requirements for the European market. Ceres Power’s unique Steel Cell technology, which works with a conventional gas connection today, is fuel flexible and could use bio-fuels or hydrogen in the future, will reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of a typical UK home by up to one third, and will lead to cheaper fuel bills for the consumer.”
Roberto Francia, ene.field coordinator, added: “We are glad to welcome another European manufacturer to ene.field, the largest and most ambitious European programme for the pre-commercial deployment of stationary fuel cells for micro-CHP. Ceres Power units are being deployed in the UK, one of the markets with the greatest potential for micro-CHP. Ceres Power’s SteelGen units will be monitored, contributing to the wealth of evidence on fuel cell micro-CHP benefits that ene.field aims to generate. We look forward to working with our British colleagues and are sure that their contribution to our project will be meaningful and useful for our industry”.
The ene.field project – co-funded by industry and the European Commission’s Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH-JU) – will place up to 1,000 fuel cell micro-CHPs into homes across eleven European countries. The project (which runs from 2012-2017, featuring 26 partners from across the heating and energy industry and €26 million EU funding) is Europe’s largest deployment of this modern energy product to date and allows manufacturers to begin to reduce costs due to the volume of units involved.
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