The fuel cell is an idea whose time has come, we are placing too much stress on the earth and its environment, and the consequences are just now being seen. If we don't change our way of thinking about power and transportation, our current consumption will degrade the environment and our way of life. |
Our Business Philosophy E1PS is not an enviornmentalist group, it's a realist group. We cannot continue to burn fuels to produce motive and electrical power. Los Angeles has days that are so bad that you can't exercise outdoors. The air quality hurts the sensitive population, the very young and the old. The California grid is on the verge of resembling a third world electrical grid, unreliable and underpowered. We need a decentralized grid, with multiple small scale generating plants, rather than a power source located far away. We need to replace the burning of fuels with a chemical conversion. The fuel cell is the technology that will allow us to create power through chemical conversion, not combustion. Our Company E1PS is a group of people who see the need for change, and want to be on the forefront of that change. The people E1PS deals with think outside the conventional technology, and look to use the power of the future. 
Hydrogen as a source to power fuel cells Hydrogen will not be the main fuel for generating electricity with a PEM fuel cell. The main fuels will be natural gas, propane and methane, there is very little hydrogen pipeline infrastructure in the US. For as advanced as we think we are in current technology, most of our energy still originates from digging a deep hole in the ground, and hydrogen doesn't exist in deep holes in the ground. Hydrogen is a far cleaner carrier of energy, but is difficult to store and impossible to "find". A reliable, cleaner and more efficient use of fossil fuels and methane will still be achieved by using PEM fuel cells for remote and residential applications both on and off the electrical grid. |
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The Future Imagine a future where there are no blackouts on the coldest and hottest days, where there are no "Smog Alerts", and the skies are clean all year long, not just the day after it rains. New housing developments won't stretch the grid beyond capacity, they will add new mini power generation plants throughout the grid. This subdivided grid will be able to grow quickly and keep pace with development. The fuel cell will be able to deliver this future, and more. The fuel cell will be able to power everything from portable radios to entire cities, with the car and home being the biggest markets for fuel cell power. There won't be a need for building new power plants, each home will have a small 5kW fuel cell to provide basic power, and lessen demand on current power plants. Each car will contain a 50kW fuel cell engine, enough power to run a home without any outside grid connections. The overall outlook on power and fuel will begin to change.
The current electrical grid The problems we are facing with the California electrical grid are similiar to our freeway problems. We build the infrastructure, and then let the surrounding area build until the point of saturation, at which time the infrastructure is investigated for expansion, and several years later the system is overhauled and expanded. When freeways hit saturation the results are longer commutes, when the electrical grid hits saturation, the consequences are catastrophic.
We all need to look at how we can become part of this change to a new form of cleaner and more reliable power, the conversion of energy through reaction, not combustion. |
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