Fuel Cell Advantages
The primary advantage of fuel cells over batteries for telecommunications backup is their longer guaranteed—and definable—run time. While batteries generally have a life expectancy of five years with capacity diminishing as they get older and can be ruined by drawing their charge down too far, fuel cells can operate for ten years or more with power quality and quantity undiminished and fully usable. This, combined with ability to remotely monitor fuel cell status, changes the decision whether to send out a generator, send out more hydrogen, or shut a station down in the face of an extended grid outage "from an art to a science." Also, although initial capital cost is higher, total life-cycle costs are generally seen as lower for fuel cells than for batteries or battery/generator combinations. Compared to generators, fuels cells are clean, quiet, and require no on-site maintenance.
Other fuel cell advantages include:
- Longer service life, requiring less maintenance, and operating efficiently over a wider temperature range (–40°–122°F) than batteries
- Scalable and modular, so they can be ganged and operated in parallel
- Usable indoors or outdoors, with compact footprints
- No moving parts, so service requirements (other than supplying fuel) are minimal
- Quiet and non-air-polluting
- Operating efficiencies typically approaching 50%.
Learn more about fuel cell operation and maintenance.