Hydrogen may – as they say – be the energy of the future, but Ballard Power Systems (TSX:BLD) is realizing that future still remains years away.
In April, in partnership with the University of Maryland and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Army Research Laboratory, Burnaby-based Ballard opened a fuel-processing research centre in Maryland where it is developing the reformer technology required to power its fuel cells with diesel, propane and natural gas. A reformer is device bolted onto a fuel cell to make it compatible with other fuels.
Ballard vice-president and chief commercial officer Michael Goldstein explained the company’s strategy to BIV this week.
“It grows our market size, it increases the number of applications we can go after,” he said. “There are going to be many different types of energy systems needed to solve the whole energy problem.”
U.S. government funding primarily supports the research centre, he said, so it does not impact the company’s balance sheet.
Goldstein noted the U.S. Army needs fuel cells for, among other things, long distance transport missions. However, given the lack of hydrogen-fueling infrastructure, it requires fuel cells that can be powered using other more prevalent fuels.
BIV looks at what Ballard is doing to achieve its goal of first-time profitability in 2011 in next week’s print edition.