GAIL-Bloom Energy sign MoU for fuel cell power generation

The Dollar Business Bureau 

State-run GAIL (India) Ltd and California-based Bloom Energy on Monday inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for deploying revolutionary natural gas-based fuel cell to generate power.

The MoU was signed by B C Tripathi, Chairman and Managing Director of GAIL and Dr K R Sridhar, CEO, Bloom Energy, in the presence of Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

Speaking at the occasion, Pradhan said, ‘This would be a technology which will have less pollution. We want this to be implemented in places like even our Parliament and also in areas like Andaman and Nicobar, where people are hugely dependent on diesel for power generation.”

This new technology transforms fuel into power via electro-chemical process and water is also less utilized in this method of electricity generation.

“The average costing of generating power commercially would be around Rs.13 per unit, as compared to higher cost of generation through diesel,” Sridhar said.

Pradhan further said that this type of clean energy would provide a way out to pollution for cities such as Delhi.

Pointing out the significance of gas-based power, the minister said, “The government of Delhi, recently, came up with a formula of odd-even for vehicles to tackle the issue of pollution. However, the coal-based power generating projects such as Badarpur has plant done more pollution in the city in a year, compared to the entire 4-wheelers pollution in 17 years.”