United States Patent No. 7,430,459, issued last Tuesday.

This patent brings energy control systems and commodities market monitoring systems together.  The system contemplates installing fuel cells (or other alternative technology power generating systems) at the customer’s location.  The fuel cell remains dormant until the market price of electricity makes operation of the fuel cell system economically feasible.

By way of the example given, the cost of generating electricity by means of a coal-fired plant is compared to the price of operating a hydrocarbon employing fuel cell.  When the market price of generating electricity by the more traditional means makes it worthwhile to operate the hydrocarbon based fuel cell, a signal is sent from a central location to switch on the alternative technology power generator.

A side benefit it that with the fuel cell serving as a back-up generator of sorts, the customer becomes essentially “blackout”-proof.

Interesting Note - Originally filed back in July 2000, this patent was pending at the USPTO for more than 8 years!

Download U.S. Patent No. 7,430,459

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am and is filed under Energy Patent of Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.