Ceres Power | Fully Charged 

this guy is straight up awesome. I have looked up videos on fuel cells, reporters always gave generic info on them without specs. I respect you for asking the important questions. love your show.

Thanks for the education on fuel cells.

Dr. Brian Steel... makes new fuel cell from steel... **drops tea cup**

Glad you're featuring Ceres Power! I designed and build a machine for their production line and was happy to see it at 3:13 :)

Appreciated this transparency :D lovely vid

this show makes me happy. please keep making more!!!

Brilliant thanks for the update. Lovely to see intelligent people taking on real problems and finding solutions.

Thank you Robert. I have been learning a lot lately about energy, renewables, and solutions for energy problems. Your style and approach are light and pleasant to watch, while the depth and contents are valuable and technical enough to be useful. It is a very difficult balance to keep and you are doing it masterfully.

Fantastic as always. It's an interesting idea and glad to see British companies doing well in this area, we're great in Britain at manufacturing advanced kit, it's a shame it's not so widely know by the greater public.

A great idea well delivered, I have wanted to know more about CERES for ages, and have even applied to work for them on occasions.

"They bought us sandwiches, I'M JUST BEING TRANSPARENT!" brilliant.

This explained what they do so much clearer than the multiple videos on the Ceres website.

Would be great if car companies would install these fuel cells in place of a range extender engine in their vehicles that have that setup. Wonder how the mileage would differ between the fuel cell and the motor with the same size tank.

This is the most professionally made show on RU-vid, the presenter is a total natural.......should be on tv!

Ceres Power generates metallic based SOFC. The problem they have are 1: the SOFC cells they make are made of steel and ceramic. Therefore, due to different in thermal expansion of metal and ceramic, they can not last long for a periodic on-off operation due to periodic demand of a house (high morning and evening demand and less demand during midday). 2- As a byproduct of SFOC generates heat. This heat can be stored in hot tanks. Once the hot tank temperature reached a certain level, the fuel cell has to be stopped. 3- SOFC Fuel cells operate in excess of 550 degC, therefore, the start up operation of SOFCs can take time. From all above points, it is hard to justify employing Ceres Power products in households. As evidence of this is they have not introduced any product to market, despite they had plan to so in 2010. The share price of Ceres Power gives good indication of they promises how believed by investors. It is not a hard logic, SOFC Fuel cells operation requires steady operation and this can be achieved only when a part of required heat and electricity should be covered by SOFCs. Such a circumstances are large building, hotels, airports etc. For this type of applications, Ceramic based SOFC are better than metal based and hence, Ceres Power will not make a major impact in the market with their current technology.

Great video, thanks for putting this together. What a potential game changer!

Much more precise info. needed. But thanks for the diversity of products/topics covered.

Great video as always Robert. Very interesting tech, and right in my neck of the woods aswell!

Excellent video Robert thank you.

I was highly sceptical until they included the heat capture element of this, which makes it far more reasonable and efficient. It's essentially a localised version of power plant community heating projects.

Great stuff. I'd have liked to hear installation cost versus yearly savings, which gives you the period until break even. I think that's the incentive people need to hear (I do) and it's also a good way to compare options.

At last a programme not slating one technology over another! Good effort!

Similar to what Bloom Energy Does in the US. K.R Sridhar who worked in Nasa had a vision to make this technology available to the world. I think that was way back in the late 2000. Good to see UK is pushing forward with this technology.

YAAAAA This is another great show Thankyou I love all your vids great to know info

It is really quite incredible. They are building efficient fuel cells out of fairly common materials. And moving production closer to consumer means you don't have transmissions losses that other power plants have. It seems like a really good option to compliment solar to give you a bit more energy when the sun doesn't shine.

Wow! Now that's a fuel cell. I always felt that H2 is bad and hard to ship around. Now this cell can just use gas!? Wonderful! Thank you for sharing!!!

great effort, appreciable their fuel cell development for future all types of usage,,,

Another great episode. Thank you.

AWESOME and exciting video!

Brilliant. Local Aussie Company Ceramic Fuel Cell made one in the 1990-2007....but the Australian government forced them out of the country (to Germany) and now ???? CHP billiant. Not for Australia, because the Government has allowed all their mates (big business and relatives) sell all our gas overseas, leaving a gas shortage here and High prices. If you want to know what NOT to do look down under the government has stuffed it completely....

Amazing things are getting much much better love the show

This is the best news I've had today considering the man in the White House decided to pull the USA out of the Paris Accords. I hope the EU, England and the rest of the world will continue to move forward to create technologies, policies and change behaviors that will promote life and improve the quality of life for all of us here on this planet.

Such good news. I love this show.

I'm so excited for your hat.... and nice video too!

I love this channel.

A very encouraging development - some key IPR developed in the UK and being able to use common and hopefully cheap materials. I wonder how this would perform with wood or digester gas. Edit: By "wood" I mean "wood gas"

I absolutely adore what you are doing with this channel. It's really helping me to stay (or feel) on top of all the things developing in the field and I wish my govt tuned in all the time. The only thing that could make me even happier was if you hired an illustrator from time to time. So thick peops like me could understand better how the cutting edge stuff you show us works. P/S I don't know if I can get over the level of corruption you allowed yourselves to drop to when you accepted those sandwiches.

So efficiency-wise it's a little bit like running a combined cycle powerplant in your boiler cupboard? Decently efficient electricity generation, then the exhaust heat used for something else at a decent efficiency too.

Lots of questions here. - Does the system have to be pre-heated to 7 or 800 degrees to work? - Does it need to continually run to function, no off state without long startup times? - How much gas does it use at minimum (idling) and is this why you look to feeding out back to the grid while you're not home cause it has to just keep going no-matter what the home needs? - What is the cost and life of the cells? - Do they need cleaning due to impurities in the feed-in gas or does this just degrade the life cycle (block your micro-holes)? - Does the system also need a water connection as well as a gas connection? - Could it run as a generator in a caravan, or is the fuel used and waste heat, just too high?

Great tech and great video

Looks promising! I never heard of this in any other news

wery interesting! learned a lot! thanks!

I think this idea can work for such northern countries as the UK, Germany and Japan. But in much of the US heating is not the biggest use of grid electricity, AC is. So natural gas conversion plus heat efficiency gets reduced, or worse, causes the need for more AC.

I want more of this

This fuel cell box can convert trucks and buses into the electric mode, even if there is no charging infrastructure, but just the gas infrastructure. whoever starts a company for converting buses, trucks and cars to this fuel cell + electric motors, will make a lot of money from places where the electric infrastructure is not ready for electric cars.

These cells would be amazing combined with a battery storage system to capture unused energy while you're not at home and the gas grid isn't under as much load from things like cooking and heating. Then when gas demand goes up, they can be switched off or reduced in output while your home runs on batteries to keep the overall consumption of gas lower. I'd love to have one in my home, that's for sure.

"Fascinating" sounds like an understatement to me!

Cool video, I like the automation fast cut near the start ^^ Cheers Fuel cells & Batteries : Energy Storage & Energy Conversion : Molecular Chemical Energy Systems Humans are biological fuel cells, oxidizing carbon in our lungs to generate energy from our food, CO2 out like an engine that burns fuel, without the nasty tail pipe carcinogens associated with internal combustion engine emissions. Fuel cells create energy cleanly like a biological fuel cell system. In both cases molecular chemical energy systems. We can learn from nature & fuel cells are examples of biological process in a man made system. Solar photovoltaic panels convert sunlight into electricity, a design that originated in biological plant cells, photosynthetic chloroplasts are specialized cells than convert blue & red portions of sunlight to power the two major kinds of chloroplast, A & B respectively.

Being a cruising sailor, I have this notion of a propulsion/generation system that integrates a hydrogen fuel cell engine/generator, a reverse osmosis water maker (to convert sea to fresh), and a hydrogen separation and storage system. The theory being: unlimited access to sea water that is used as the base raw ingredient for a zero-emissions hydrogen-based power solution that's complemented by battery storage. Not sure about all the science, and the packaging maybe tricky, but a boat certainly provides more flexibility than, for example, an EV.

Wow, good stuff. Never knew fuel cells had it made it this far.

Excellent vid!

I knew Professor Steele. Nice man!

What annoys me with this show is the complete lack of skeptical questions. So much obvious bullshit here and not a single grain of salt in sight. If Ceres are not paying you, they should be. Problems: "1kW is enough to power a house" Well yes, a house where no one does anything. "30% more efficient than grid so you save 30% of emissions" NO! Not even close. The grid is not 100% carbon based. "You generate power where its used" Well you still had to expend energy getting the gas there. Robert, get someone to help you get some questions prepared that are not just "oh wow, so you're essentially ?". You don't need to make it confrontational but just one or two prepared and detailed questions would make things so much better.

One thing not mentioned when talking about efficiency is the fact that the gas must be transported to the house. In places where that is necessary for central heating, its not such big issue, but it shouldn't be ignored as gas leaks are a major problem and the whole infrastructure cost should not be left out of any cost analysis. It would have been interesting to see an analysis of how it would do as a battery using electrolysis to create hydrogen then back to electricity. Would the storage of the hydrogen make it nonviable for most locations and would the overall cost be competitive when compared to more conventional batteries.

4 years later & still no commercial products available to the public

Would have been good to hear about pricing for home use. Practicality etc.

Many of the comments in the comments section are way off. The prime point was that a company has developed a new type of cheap to make fuel cell that could make an impact on the market. The electricity output of the cell is quite secondary. That can be scaled up to suit. One of these could be charging your EV overnight a lot cheaper than directly off the grid.

This looks like a BLOOMBOX fuel cell. Regardless of who makes these, hats off to CERES POWER for producing them for residential use. BTW, I've been asking BLOOMBOX when they plan to produce a residential version without any response from them. Cheers!

As a backup power in a isolated home it is the best solution. Because even with backup batteries, they could be not enough. But if you are connected to the grid and you just need gas for hot water, this doesn't make sense, because a boiler is more effective for hot water and the energy from the electric grid is already majority green. Even for cars, the problem of energy is almost solved with the faster charger, that are getting faster! But is a cleaver solution, for some applications.

This was the best video I have seen yet. If I could get this unit in my house I would do it in a heartbeat. Do you know how much they cost?

So what is the projected life of the fuel cell and if required how much does it cost to replace a failing cell ? The piece seems to enthuse about use in the home, where is the gas coming from to drive this fuel cell, are they suggesting hydrogen from solar panel powered breakdown of water or maybe from the home natural gas supply coming in from the street ? I've played this video twice and visited the companies web site but the source of fuel gas, no matter how catholic, is something not discussed. This might be a good solution for pig farmers with their own digestors to produce CH4, but for home use as long as Cerespower continues to gloss over awkward questions, colour me sceptical.

What a great technology. Love the videos, keep up the good work.

Good episode, personally this is what i like to see.

What are your thoughts about battery technology vs other technologies like the one you're talking about? Who will be the eventual winner and will there just be one?

Robert there is still a Feed in Tariff for Solar panels.. not was. 4.14 pence per unit generation.. and another 5 pence per unit for excess energy exported to grid. Tax free, index linked and paid for 20 years.

Intruiging solution but instead of using electricity from the grid you are buying more gas from the grid. The question Robert was asking was correct, but he didn't get a straight answer because it does both electricity and heat. The electricity graph is nice ofcourse, but it doesn't show the gas usage, which is where the energy is really coming from. There is a small caveat that in NL the goal is to stop using gas for heating by 2050, this device would essentially become outlawed at that time. There is also a push for newly built homes without a gas-grid connection with air-water heat-pumps for heating and hot water. And that has a COP of about 3.5-4, I can't imagine the Ceres power coming close. Common Air/water heat pumps are the Panasonic Aquarea and Mitsubishi Ecodan, from you guessed it right, Japan. These are all the rage for countries without gas-grids, Portugal, France and Spain come to mind.

Interesting. I am amazed that it doesn't care whether the input gas is methane, hydrogen or a mix. We've had micro-CHP systems for some time to make heat plus electricity in the home (such as Genelec (Rankine engine), and Baxi Ecogen (Stirling engine)). It seems this fuel-cell setup is quite a lot more efficient. I wonder if it's any cheaper? CHP works quite well if your demand for heat and electricity are well-matched, but in the UK they aren't really, in a domestic setup. For nearly half the year you need very little heat: some for hot water (which you could get from solar thermal instead), but much the same amount of electricity (some less for lighting). And of course the usual question - how much does one cost? I see the development project for the domestic CHP started in 2005.

I didn't understood much so please make another video with more details.

Another pretty informative episode ... :/

Maybe a good alternative for regions that don't have enough sun to make solar cost effective. I know some companies have bought these system to power their data center. If the grid has an outage (which is a common problem in the US), these can take over. It is also cheaper than buying the electricity from the grid!

Was there a mention of how much fuel it takes and how fast it uses the fuel? I know they gave a percent of efficiency but I feel like they should have given an amount of fuel to explain it better. This is a great step in the right direction!

I remember seeing something similar a few years ago, not sure where though.

i think this is pretty good with solarcity, to continue power your house in weeks with overcast ... i like this technology

Seems very good but a few unanswered questions... What is the price of installation? What is the expected lifetime of the fuel cells? If these issue can be resolved this will be a very helpful addition to our energy creation.

Robert, great show. Pity no average price for the install of the system. Just watch the BBC show about you electrifying your village. can you give us an update please.

Come on UK get your act together and let us make this organisation a global success and rather than dragging our feet..and letting others take the benefits..

So you run a gas powered heating system with a tank which produces hot water for heating and hot water for shower etc which produces heat from gas at 110% efficiency. Then you add a fuel cell which produces ~700 W which then generates power from gas at 35% efficiency at the best? Variable load doesn't work good on fuel cells like on ICE cars, so you put in an additional battery or flat it out by powering the grid and your house to smooth out any peaks. Well, you still burn gas instead of renewable energy and this at an astonishing low rate of efficiency. Bravo!

Can fully charged do an update on this story please?

blueGEN is another to check out, ceramic fuel cells australia make a pretty awesome system, power and hot water in one, they even recouped the water produced by the fuel cell. but they basically went but here, no government support, industry that didn't care etc, etc. I think they moved their operation to Germany, but that was like 10 years ago. dunno if they're still going

This could be a big thing for Renewable energies, especially here in Germany with the large gas grid/storage facilities and all the e-gas projects from car manufacturers and utility companies. I wonder how good the reaction times of these fuel cells are since they do not use platinum but probably they could be used to create fuel cell/battery hybrid cars that could then run on e-gas and thus be carbon neutral and help smooth out the grid on institutional level. Great news indeed

I've been saying this since the 90s... there's absolutely no reason why "fuel cells" should be limited to hydrogen gas alone. Hydrocarbon fuels can be catalyzed to extract all the power we need, instead of wasting the technology on engine exhaust treatment.

If Ontario hydro rates get any higher then I'll have to get me a few of these. Union Gas sells by volume and not mass or BTU for some dumb reason so it's hard to calculate my savings. I'll have to move them outside during the summer so my air conditioner doesn't freak out.

As always, Robert, thank you for your shows! I really enjoy them, and look forward to each new one as it comes online! But... Fuel Cells are a neat technology! But they are still, essentially, batteries. And right now, the only way to 'fill' them cheaply, is to use some form of carbon fuel (and this assumes that the fuel cell as a whole unit will ever get cheap enough to make). If you split water, as a non-carbon fuel source, to get Hydrogen for a Fuel Cell, you will have spent a lot more electricity to do it than what you will get out of the Fuel Cell- not as efficient as storing PV electricity into Li-Ion batteries. And with prices falling for Li-Ion batteries and for Solar Panels, and the capacity for batteries rising, I just don't see how fuel cells are a good option. And this is with fuel cells having non-stop research for the last 3-4 decades! And for literally decades, fuel cells have been the Red Herring of Oil Companies and Car Manufacturers, as a way to put off EVs- this seems to me to be more of the same type of misdirection. And a quick search seems to indicate that the partners of CERES are Gas and Car companies. Perhaps I am being unfair to CERES, but I am certainly not being unfair to its carbon-loving partners. It is akin to Oil and Gas companies secretly funding Anti-Nuclear protest groups to keep Nuclear Plant technology on the shelf or diminished (see Pandora's Promise). I am sure they would rather see Fuel Cells using natural gas to power homes than PV cells and batteries (or nuclear). Every year EVs, batteries and non-carbon based power is delayed means billions of dollars/pounds in profits for these companies, and they care little for the consequence.

Here in USA our air is too clean, so we're trying to burn more dinosaurs.

use those on landfill and sewer plant methane .

welcome to Bloom Energy

Great Britain always seems to do well in leading the World especially in new this type of engineering. .......:)

Hey, could you review the Sion from Sono Motors, youˋll like it. Greetings and awesome job as always.

How does the efficiency compare to PV conversion. I presume they are selling these in Japan so that when there are power shortages (as there was after Fukashima). Is the tech just a more efficient power gen than burning gas.

This sounds like an interesting product, but I'm a little skeptical because over the years I've been reading about energy issues, it seems the idea of a home fuel cell has been one that has come and gone several times. However, I can see a use for this company's product, and I hope they are successful at bringing it to the mass market. I have solar panels that are offsetting most of my home's electricity usage, but I'm aware that in absolute terms, the natural gas I burn for heating is a much larger use of energy, and source of carbon emissions. If a product like this can allow me to use the gas more efficiently, I'm all for it.

i don't like fuel cells but do see they could be good for areas where wind and solar don't work or at lest a backup.

Will these not use the fuel source if I'm not using any electricity. I'd still want a pass through battery between this and my home but I think I'd be more happy with solar/wind with that chem battery from a while back. At least with that you are not using natural resources. I'd use this more on a bio fuel dairy farm than in a home.

I want one!

Ok, so natural gas go's in to produce electricity at 50% efficiency. What byproduct is produced and what use does it have? Is that waste fed back into the system or is it lost? If you were looking for heat, doesn't a gas burning heater work at approximately 80-95%?

A whopping 66% is lost in converting fuel to electricity at the power station but only 6% (USA) is lost in the light speed transfer of power to your premises (2% in transmission and 4% in distribution). The fuel cells need to be in the power station because transporting fuel to your premises would be very expensive. On the other hand you only need to transport solar panels to your roof once. Photons from the Sun (93 million miles away) reach your photovoltaic panels in only 8.3 minutes at no charge to you. They then generate electrons and the electromagnetic waves travel into your house or back to the grid at the speed of light. So much for Ceres power?

I wonder what the weight is, per kWh running on methanol for example -- the entire system -- then compared to Li-Ion? For homes, fuel cells can make sense due to the combined heat and power applications, but for cars it's a little silly. Boats? Maybe that would be a good use-case. [Edit]: I'd also like to compare it, in stationary applications to a simple external combustion engine running on natural gas (for example an optimized Stirling engine). A stationary Stirling could achieve similar results as far as I know, and would be more fuel agnostic, but perhaps how would the costs and complexity compare?

Hello! Do you know anything about Silicon Graphite Power Cell? It would be nice if you make a video about them (or even visit the company). Nice job and keep going! Thank you!

hahaha closing the shot with a tesla as background, nice

I don't understand - is there combustion going on to generate electricity? Or is heat a by-product of a chemical reaction? Is there a flame with the Ceres unit?

He was about to get hit by that car at the end of the video. The driver had to move halfway into the oncoming lane.