“Fuji Electric has developed and is now marketing the phosphoric acid fuel cell FP100i. The company is expanding its sales network to improve the security of power sources using city gas and LPG in facilities for emergency use in hospitals. Hospitals are eligible to receive a subsidy from the government for these facilities.

Phosphoric fuel cells use acid in the electrolyte to extract electricity and heat. As for fuel, in addition to city gas and LPG, these fuel cells can also use the methane generated at sewerage treatment facilities. While the cells for home use have a power generation capacity of 0.7kW, due to their full power generation capacity of 100kw, they can also be of use in hospitals and factories, as well as in apartment buildings as in house power generation.

Up to now, the phosphoric acid fuel cells have not been used all that much because their initial costs which were higher than the existing power generators such as those for residential use and for use in hospitals. However, since the earthquake which occurred last year, they have been attracting attention as a system which can generate electricity as a distributed power system which can change its fuel over to LPG from city gas. There is also the subsidy system established by the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. The company therefore plans to sell them to hospitals. The company noted, “Previously, we had considered targeting hospitals with more than 300 beds and which use over 50kW even during nighttime. Due to the increase in the use of equipment such as electronic medical charts however, we have come to the conclusion that even hospitals with 100 beds use about this amount of electricity. This has led us to reconsider our sales strategy.”

For use in hospitals, Fuji Electric sells mainly types for emergency use which employ both LPG and city gas. This presumes a link up with facilities set up too for electricity for commercial use. During normal times as well as during power outages, city gas can be supplied and power on the order of 100kW per hour can be generated. Also, in addition to power outages, when the supply of city gas is cut off, there is a supply of LP gas from other facilities which had also been set up for this. The output at that time would be 70kVA with a 3 hour supply for each 50 kg cylinder.”