How much does a fuel cell cost

When considering fuel cells for domestic-scale distributed generation, academic and industrial estimates place the cost of a mass-produced fuel cell stack at around $500 per kW, with an additional $500–1000 per kW for other components in a complete micro-CHP system.

The costs of fuel cell systems are currently too high for increasing market penetration.

The dominant factors in the fuel cell system costs are the costs of the MEA with 49%, especially regarding the material costs. With 56% material costs of the MEA production and 56% material costs of the system production, the two cost positions have a combined share of 39% of the overall costs of the fuel cell system.

This cost could be achieved when a fuel cell system manufacturer has a large-scale plant making 500,000 systems per year Economies of scale are expected to be the main cost-down driver for the fuel cell stack and system. Performance improvements and material innovations also expected to play a significant role in lowering $/kWh cost

Bottom-up DFMA costing analysis for fuel cell stack components in this entry shows that, for stationary applications, PEM fuel cell stacks alone can approach a direct manufacturing cost of $200 per kWe of net electrical power at high production volumes (e.g., 250 kW CHP systems at 50,000 systems per year).

Only two examples from the last decade can be inferred from publicly available information, both showing that a fuel cell running on hydrogen forms only 20% of the total cost: Between 2002 and 2004, hydrogen-fuelled Plug Power GenSys systems sold for $15,000, whereas natural-gas fuelled CHP systems cost $65,000 ($55–75,000 range) .