Sustainable Energy Delivers New Fuel-Cell Inverter

Sustainable Energy Technologies , a developer of advanced power electronics for global alternative energy and renewable-energy industries, has announced that the company has delivered its first inverter platforms for stationary fuel-cell applications. The new inverter platform has a peak "stack to grid" electrical conversion efficiency of over 94%, according to Sustainable Energy.

The inverter's design offers a new approach to power conversion, enabling a single step conversion from low-voltage DC power to grid-standard AC voltage with minimal loss of energy, and active bi-directional control over the fuel cell current, the company said.

"We are now using the same power electronics, controls software and transformer design for both solar PV and fuel-cell applications," said Brent Harris, director of technology development for Sustainable Energy. "This is a very significant milestone in our quest to deliver, what we believe will be, the industry’s first 'universal' inverter -– an inverter which uses the same power electronics for all distributed generation and storage technologies."

(Source: Sustainable Energy news release, 4/27/05)