Ceramic Fuel Cells could enjoy increased unit sales

Ceramic Fuel Cells (ASX:CFU) has welcomed the UK Government’s intention to increase the feed-in tariff for micro-combined heat and power (micro-CHP) units to drive its uptake.

Beside the increase in the tariff, UK Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said he planned to remove the 30,000 cap on micro-CHP units and instead provide support to reach a 1 million unit installed base by 2020.

The current micro-CHP tariff is £0.10 for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced and an additional £0.03 for every kilowatt hour exported to the grid.

Micro-CHP proponents are pushing for an increase in the tariff to £0.15.

The support of the UK Government bodes well for Ceramic’s BlueGen fuel cell micro-CHP product, which converts natural gas into electricity and hot water for homes and other buildings.

BlueGen is currently the first and only product of its kind to receive certification under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme and is thus eligible for the feed-in tariff.

This could point the way for greater adoption of its product.

BlueGen promises electrical efficiency of up to 60% - the highest in the world. This efficiency increases to 85% when heat from the unit is used to produce hot water.