AFC Energy fully fires green fuel cell plant in Germany

AFC Energy was celebrating a week of success for its green fuel cell technology on Monday, having fully fired up its KORE cell-based power plant in Germany.

The AIM-traded industrual fuel cell company said it had successfully delivered gross electrical output in excess of 200kW at its KORE fuel cell power plant in Stade, Lower Saxony.

AFC Energy said the commissioning of the KORE system took place over the last five days, concluding on Sunday.

It said it was the first time all three tiers of its KORE fuel cell system had operated in parallel with each other, dispatching electricity into the German national grid.

So far, more than 1.3MW of power had been generated and sold into the grid under the Power Purchase Agreement AFC had with Statdewerke Stade.

"As a company, we've come an extraordinary distance over the past 12 months and today marks a significant milestone achievement, most importantly being the delivery of a fuel cell stack which has generated in excess of its nameplate capacity of 10kW", said AFC chief executive officer Adam Bond.

"Today marks a significant step forward, demonstrating further de-risking of our technology and validates the decision in December 2014 to accelerate the deployment of AFC's KORE fuel cell system", he added.

The company would now embark on a programme of design optimisation, and develop the second generation of its system with an expectation of being released later in the year.

AFC Energy's board said the second generation would focus on maintaining power output, as well as enhance the system's efficiency, longevity and availability as a whole, while reducing the cost of engineering to ensure the technology remained competitive.