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Fuel Cell Powered Backup System
bassrat writes "Coleman just announced the world's first backup power system with Fuel Cells. Like any new technology, it's a bit pricey at $6K but the rest of the specs are pretty decent. Info at http://www.airgen.com/"
Do I really want to be carrying around pressurized containers of hydrogen near me? Near my servers? in my house?
If its taking hydrogen out of the air surely after a certain amount of running you will begin to have unsafe ammounts of oxygen/carbon dioxide in the air supply nearby?
Also why advertise it primarily as a UPS when you could, with a little work hook it into your houses main electrical supply like solar pannels and save on your electricity bill~?
nich
37 - what does it stand for really...
With a large hydrogen canister, your runtime is significantly (as in an order of magnitude - YMMV) longer.
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All these people whining about how explosive hydrogen is etc etc. Look folks, you have a tankful of gasoline riding under your arse in your car, you have a natural gas furnace, stove, and water heater, and use a propane barbeque. These things are more of a threat than a little hydrogen. Are we stuck at the Hindenburg? Remember that was caused by the flammable hull of the ship, not the hydrogen itself!
As for these folks saying "oh no, it's using all the oxygen" - I sure hope your rooms aren't airtight, they shouldn't be - oxygen will flow in to replace that being used with proper ventilation. Use your brains people.
According to TIA/EIA-569-A the humidity of computer/network equipment spaces should be 30%-50%. These fuel cells let out barely even drops of water and they create heat to evaporate it off to if you have even basic ariflow in the area it wont mess up your equipment.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
And, you can buy additional hydrogen canisters for added run time.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
First...
The capacity of the generator is only 1000 watts! What the hell? that's not more than 3 PCs! You get some really quiet generators that would do the same for a lot less.
Second...
What's the deal with a 1 year warranty? Surely, a backup system is meant to be reliable. You'd think the company would atleast put a 5 year warranty on this thing.
Third...
"Provides electricity as long as hydrogen fuel is provided". First, hydrogen is flammable. Second, they don't seem to mention what the consumption rate of this generator is...which leads me to the third point - hydrogen fuel will be quite expensive.
Looks a little iffy if you ask me.
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Lots of posts rant about oxygen deprivation... if you're sitting in an air tight room somehow you're probably not going to be worried that there is one more oxygen breather, seriously, ever heard of ventillation?
I'd be more concerned about how much additional heat and humididty this thing is producing and whether the server room tech had accounted for it before leaving for the weekend.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
And that would most likely come from electricity. One of the most prevalent sources of said energy is coal burning power plants. Now, I know that there are a lot of dams that provide us with power too, but those also have costs. The Northwest has only recently come to realize that putting dams on rivers threatens fish, etc. If there is some vast reserve of pure hydrogen that someone can find, then great. But until then, these fuel cells simply shift the pollution to the site of the power plants. Please don't get me wrong, I love the idea of driving a car with a fuel cell sometime in the future; or even using the Coleman generator in my house. Truly great would be using a solar panel array to split the water, then using the result to feed a fuel cell later. Peace (first post! yay!)
If so, maybe it was caused by a sysadmin snaring their ankle in those power cords hanging out of the front of the unit.. or maybe that power switch sticking out like a chair prevented a falling object from hitting the ground :/
I hate to be mean, as it's obviously a new product, and from a company that is likely new to machine room ergonomics, but it appears to have a few case design flaws that will probably contribute to downtime as much as the power outage the unit was designed to prevent.
Sure is a cute little thing though.. maybe in a future version they'll recess the cords in a well, and recess the power switch away from where it can accidentally be tripped. I like the case design otherwise.
I suppose that if engineers really wanted to work at it and spend a lot of money, we might have nuclear powered, hydrogen lofted aircraft carrier blimps
If you had a nuclear-powered blimp, you wouldn't need hydrogen for lift. The abundance of heat generated by nuclear reactors would be quite sufficient to keep a hot air blimp afloat. No special gases or fuel required, other than plutonium.
Hello? Is this slashdot or a luddite convention? This thing is new technology. Fuel cells have been around a while, but this is the first time that private citizens can get their hands on them. THat being said, I think its wonderful. As more competition comes about and the public will learn of their benefits, I expect to see more of these little wonders, making more power at cheaper prices.
Think of the benefits.
A more powerful version could be built into new homes that would automatically kick in and provide silent, backup power for the refrigerator and freezer, to keep food from spoiling.
This could possibly kick off the infrastructure necessary for having hydrogen based vehicles replace the current internal combustion engine powered vehicles of today.
It could finally allay the public's fears about hydrogen being a volatile, explosive gas.
Increased competition and development to make smaller, more powerful hydro generators will also translate into cars. A 1000 mile range hydro powered car that goes 0-60 in 4 secs with comfortable seating for four, yet puts out almost no pollutants could be in our future if these things were to be seriously adopted by society.
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