AT&T Campus Taking Steps to install fuel cell cogenerators > Fuel Cell Dispatch

AT&T Campus Taking Steps to install fuel cell cogenerators

The communications company is asking the city's permission to install fuel cell cogenerators to supply energy along with existing solar panels at the San Ramon facility.

If the Planning Commission OK's the land use permit at Tuesday night's meeting, AT&T could very soon move its San Ramon campus off the grid.

The communications company already gets most of its energy from an array of solar panels on its 2600 Camino Ramon property. It's asking the city's permission to install five fuel cell cogeneration units to...

add another megawatt of electricity by using natural gas without combustion.

Bloom Energy designed the fuel cell units, which generates power from natural gas through a non-combustion chemical reaction with special ceramic membranes. The membranes – coated in inks, anodes and cathodes – act as electrolytes to convert natural gas into electricity, heat, water and carbon dioxide.

Each fuel cell unit measures 7 feet wide, 7 feet tall and 26 feet long.

The city's analysis says the proposed units are consistent with local, regional and state regulations although they generate more carbon dioxide than allowed by San Ramon's new Climate Action Plan which becomes effective later this week.

CO2 output isn't the only thing considered, however. The cogenerators would produce no sulfur oxide or nitrogen oxide. At 773 pounds per megawatt hour, the CO2 emissions would still fall 40 percent below the national average, according to the EPA and a city staff report.

But PG&E manages to produce that same amount of energy with lower carbon dioxide emissions, the city noted.

Overall, the plan would help the public, city planners concluded in a staff report going before Planning Commissioners this week. The units would take AT&T's San Ramon campus entirely off the grid, leaving more power for other users.