Fuel Cell

[tasmo]

Thinking of buying a fuel cell to power my van but it's difficult to find much info on them. Does anyone use one or have any info on them, with a lot of sites now charging £3-5 a night for electricity it would soon pay for it's self.RegardsTom

 

[otherclive]

I've never paid that much for electric which seems pretty high. I think I would be looking at alternate sites.
The fuel cells by EFOY are widely mentioned if you search the internet and the link below takes you to EFOYs site. The other option would be solar panels and use ordinary gas for heating water and the caravan. It would be interesting to see how the cost over 5 years compare.

 

[ProfJohnL]

After doing some admittedly fairly cursory research , the cost of fuel cells is still prohibitively high for most caravanners for both the initial equipment and the fuel on an ongoing basis, Though the technology seems attractive, it doesn't seem to have progressed very much to bring prices down.

Fuel cells are still a quite exotic choice. Their fantastic for safety critical systems such as off shore warning bouys, or other places where power availability and security is a prime concern, but its difficult to see a caravan in that light.

To get an idea of costs I suggest you look at:-

http://www.fuelcellsystems.co.uk/technical/power-calculator/
Solar with batteries would be a more cost effective solution, as the initial outlay is far less and the fuel is free.

 

[Surfer]

I had a spreadsheet that a user had sent me which showed that it took nearly 4 years to break even, but at the time their fuel cell cost about £1500. They are now closer to £2200. The break even point was basically determined using the cost of the fuel cell, refills and savings generated by using non EHU sites plus some other factors.

 

[ProfJohnL]

Hello Surfer,

As far as I can see based on the figures from the company I point to there will be no break-even point to using a Fuel Cell to using EHU's

The initial purchase price obviously depends on the capacity of the model chosen, but it seems the offer for a 40W model (which just about covers normal battery usage) start at £2364 adn that does not include any control gear. so with remote controls the costs will almost certainly be over £2500. At 40W that gives 960WHours per day or just under 1kWh.

Other data suggests the typical fuel usage to achieve this will be 0.9L but the fuel costs £7.80 per litre! By comparison, an Ehu provides 3.5kW so that's up to 84kWh per day!

 

[RogerL]

In my experience, very few sites actually charge for electricity, simply including it in the pitch fee - so a fuel cell breakeven point is infinite as there's no reduction in site charge by being self-sufficient.
I stayed on a CL in July, ie peak summer, which had meters fitted but not used for charging - over the whole fortnight we were there, the average electricity cost logged by the meter was just 83p per day, which I guess was about 5 kwh/day - so what's the price of a fuel cell capable of 5 kwh/day for summer use - I hate to think how expensive a unit would be that copes with winter usage, say 50 kwh/day !

 

[Surfer]

Hello Surfer,

As far as I can see based on the figures from the company I point to there will be no break-even point to using a Fuel Cell to using EHU's

The initial purchase price obviously depends on the capacity of the model chosen, but it seems the offer for a 40W model (which just about covers normal battery usage) start at £2364 adn that does not include any control gear. so with remote controls the costs will almost certainly be over £2500. At 40W that gives 960WHours per day or just under 1kWh.

Other data suggests the typical fuel usage to achieve this will be 0.9L but the fuel costs £7.80 per litre! By comparison, an Ehu provides 3.5kW so that's up to 84kWh per day!

I am only going on his figures as using non EHU I would think that he would have saved £5 per night and also a big saving on the cost of gas. As said the figures were based on a fuel cell costing £1500 at the time. These figures were given to me sometime in 2011. I still have them but cannot access them as my external hard drive has passed on!