Wednesday 22 August 2018

Bosch buys stake in UK fuel cell company

German engineering company Bosch has abought a 4% stake in UK fuel cell firm Ceres Power Holdings.

It is to make a £9 million equity investment in the company and plans to jointly develop the next generation of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology, which can be used as a power supply for factories, cities, data centres and electric vehicle (EV) charging.

SOFC uses an electrochemical reaction in the fuel cell stack to convert fuel such as natural gas or hydrogen into electricity, with much lower emissions than from power stations that use a combustion process.

The companies eventually hope for one SOFC module to generate 10kW of power and where more electricity is needed, they could be interconnected.

Stefan Hartung, Bosch Management Board Member said: “Bosch believes that the highly efficient fuel cell, with its very low emissions, has an important role to play in energy systems’ security of supply and flexibility. Fuel cell technology will bring the move to alternative energy a step closer and we will be working on this with our development partner Ceres Power.”