Brooks Residential Fuel Cell Demonstration

Southwest Research Institute, under a contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers demonstrated three 5 kW Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cells at Brooks City-Base in San Antonio, Texas during the period, February 6, 2003 through March 15, 2004. The fuel cells, provided under the contract by Plug Power Inc. were fueled with natural gas and supplemented the power to three individual base housing units at Brooks. The units were grid connected and did not supply heat for any combined heat and power application. Other partners in the demonstration were City Public Service of San Antonio and St. Philips College. The primary objective of the project was to install, operate, maintain, monitor, and report data on the fuel cells to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The data collected from the three fuel cells can be found by pressing the "Historical Data" section at the following URL. Some browsers may drop you into a login page, if this happens, one just follows the directions provided. "http://www.swri.edu/fuelcell/default.htm"