Cost compare Fuel Cell vs. Status Quo?
Hi,
My guess is that it still doesn't pay to use Fuel Cells vs. the current most common setup of Batteries + Converter + some % of shore power + some % of generator over varying boon docking time frames. But I have no facts to support that (This thought comes to mind after looking at pricing for Lifeline AGM batteries). It would be good to have a current pricing model to compare these different mechanisms to have power where and when you want it. I understand the European methanol fuel cells cost in the thousands and the user is locked in to the vendor for the methanol/water mix used to fuel them, but I wonder if and maybe when current costing will show them to be a better deal. How would we know? Is this something we the forum should setup to quantify and track? It seems like it should be an engineer's dream kind of project (My undergrad was in Zoology but I could help with any spreadsheet modeling of an appropriate definition). Any takers?
In case there's much interest in this, I should mention that I'll be in the Coast Range and not checking in this weekend starting Thursday PM. through Monday AM.
Walt
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