The Mheda Journal

photo courtesy of Plug Power Inc.

I had the pleasure to interview Warren Brower, product marketing manager at Plug Power Inc., a Latham, NY-based manufacturer of hydrogen fuel cells, last week. Mr. Brower was fomerly the marketing manager at Raymond Corporation and joined Plug Power in 2007.

I knew a little bit about hydrogen fuel cells before speaking to Mr. Brower, but now I feel like almost as much of an expert as he is. (I’m not, though…not even close.)

One of the things I found interestng was the go-to-market strategy for his company:

Our intention is not to go out and replace every lead-acid battery out there. We understand that a hydrogen fuel cell is not for every application. The key with fuel cells is to focus on specific applications and specific opportunities in high-volume and high-throughput applications.

Such a strategy is important for distributors to know. Do you have customers out there who are eyeing this technology? Do they fit the “high-throughput” description. If not, they may not be a good candidate for hydrogen fuel cell forklifts.

Another interesting excerpt from our interview:

You’re going to see other applications start to surface where fuel cells make sense instead of using diesel generators, backup lead-acid batteries or whatever. So I think in the next couple to three years, you’re going to see a major push within this field.

So, apparently we’re just scratching the surface with this technology. Although it’s been “a few years out” for more than a few years now, it’s something to continue to keep an eye on.

Anybody out there doing anything interesting with fuel cells? I’d love to hear about it!

Tags: batteries, forklift, green, lift trucks, material handling

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 4:35 pm and is filed under lift trucks, material handling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.