Power Generation - Hydrogen and Fuel Cells: Advances in Transportation and Power - page 186

Dow Chemical Company plant in Freeport, TX. The Freeport plant is the
home of Dow's largest chemical manufacturing installation in the world
and one of the world's largest chemical plants. In 2004 Dow Chemical
and GM began the installation of fuel cells to convert excess hydrogen
into electricity.
HYDROGEN AT DOW
Hydrogen is a natural by-product of chemical manufacturing at
Dow. Dow has used its excess hydrogen as fuel for boilers and also sells
hydrogen to industrial gas companies for resale to their customers. Using
this hydrogen through a fuel cell to generate electricity is more efficient
and economically desirable than either of these applications. By efficiently
consuming by-product hydrogen in a fuel cell, Dow will reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases and create competitively priced electricity. Dow and
GM aim to prove the viability of hydrogen fuel cells for a large industrial
power system.
The initial GM fuel cell will generate 75 kilowatts of power which is
enough electricity for fifty average homes. Dow and GM plan to ultimate-
ly install up to 400 fuel cells to generate 35 megawatts of electricity. That
would be enough power for 25,000 average sized American homes. While
this may seem like a lot of capacity, it represents only two percent of the
total Dow needs at this site. Dow believes that this will make them less
dependent on fossil fuels and help usher in a more sustainable future.
DIVERSIFYING THE ENERGY SUPPLY
As part of an ongoing effort to diversify its energy supply and ad-
vance the implementation of clean, distributed generation on Long Island,
the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) announced that it will purchase
45 fuel cell systems for installation across Long Island, for the first time in-
stalling them in Long Island homes.
Twenty-five of the 5-kW fuel cell systems called GenSys5CS will be
installed at LIPA's West Babylon Fuel Cell Demonstration Site, which cur-
rently contains fuel cell systems feeding directly into the Long Island elec-
trical grid. The remaining 20 systems will generate on-site heat and power
for single or multi-family residential sites, for the first time in LIPA's ser-