Extending battery storage by fuel cell in solar home

This project is to develop a ‘SOFcSOLar’ (SOFSOL) home power system combining the solar battery infrastructure of the Jiangsu partner ZNB with the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) knowledge of the UK company Adelan, with manufacturing expertise from Conrad Anderson. Renewable energy is increasingly used in China homes, but is limited by energy storage. Batteries are traditionally being used to store the intermittent renewable energy but the problem is battery weight, volume and cost. We have shown that fuel cells can enhance the battery storage to give many times more storage and back-up capacity for the same weight/volume/cost, while also providing hot water from the gas grid. Therefore the proposed new solar/battery/fuel cell product to be developed in this project will be beneficial in solar house applications, with large market demand. The project is led by Dr K Kendall FRS, Adelan Ltd in the UK and by Mr Guo Junping, assisted by SOFC expert Dr Liang Bo, in Jiangsu. The UK and China partners have a strong track record in the fuel cell, battery and solar fields and have visited each other many times over the past 3 years. The outcomes will be:- A new joint company to commercialise the results in China markets; New product prototypes for market application in China; New IPR for inventions; New publications in Scientific Journals.