Fuel Cell Balance of Plant Manufacturing Cost Reduction

Last year, at the 2007 DOE Fuel Cell Seminar, I gave a presentation of fuel cell manufacturing costs trends, early market product scenarios, and a Bill of Materials level breakdown of manufacturing costs of the critical subsystems and components.  Component cost targets for initial and mass production were presented, along with some conceptual ideas of approaches to meet them.

  A particular challenge of fuel cell manufacturing cost reduction is that fuel cells are an immature, high-cost technology with great, but unrealized reduction potential.  As shown in my presentation last year, Balance of Plant represents over one-half the manufacturing cost of a fuel cell powerplant, which has put huge pressure on these suppliers to reduce prices.  However, fuel cell balance of plant components are based on mature technologies with less potential for rapid cost reduction, and the general area suffers from a relative lack of investment, and uncertain production volumes to drive it in the fuel cell space.

 

This year, I am proposing to show how VAIREX is responding to this challenge by taking last year’s analysis a level deeper and exploring the specific design, manufacturing and supply chain innovations VAIREX is taking with two of our first-to-market products.  These initiatives have an ultimate goal of a 10X reduction in manufacturing cost, with an immediate target of 3X in low-rate initial production.