Intelligent Energy acquiring portfolios of telecom towers

Intelligent Energy

holds a special place in my heart as the only public fuel cell company to ever make a profit. it happened in 2012.

Intelligent Energy builds proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells for automotive, consumer, and stationary applications. The firm had raised more than $150 million from investors including Meditor European Master Fund before going public last year and raising $94.1 million. But a small, flush, newly public company needs to keep its growth story going with new markets and acquisitions.

Intelligent Energy is looking to build its tower services portfolio through its subsidiary, Essential Energy India, and its acquisition of 26,500 Indian telecom towers from GTL. The subsidiary has already amassed a power portfolio of around 100 megawatts across 10,000 towers. Intelligent suggests that it intends to convert the telecom towers from their current battery or diesel power to PEM fuel cells.

Intelligent Energy also acquired the portable fuel cell and disposable fuel cartridge assets of France's BIC in a deal worth up to $22 million, according to reports.

The fuel cell firm currently has a market cap of $318 million.

FuelCell Energy sells microgrid project to NRG Yield

FuelCell Energy just sold a 1.4-megawatt fuel-cell power plant project at the University of Bridgeport to NRG Energy, a YieldCo. The fuel-cell vendor called it "the first-ever fuel-cell project placed into any YieldCo."

FuelCell Energy is the revenue and deployment leader in the fuel cell space, with 300 megawatts of power generation capacity installed or in backlog. The company builds molten carbonate stationary fuel-cell power plants located at wastewater treatment facilities, universities and pump stations. 

The YieldCo structure requires a constant diet of new projects. With a multi-year power-purchase agreement, along with operations and maintenance (O&M) factored in, this microgrid project will be part of the great YieldCo surge of 2014 and 2015 -- which now includes SunEdison, SunPower and First Solar.

The power plant provides electricity and heat to a microgrid covering 80 percent of the campus and can function independently of the municipal grid in the case of a grid outage. 

"This project is a compelling model where the university pays NRG Yield for the clean power it receives while averting the need to invest in the power generation asset itself," said Michael Bishop, the CFO of FuelCell Energy, in a release.

Ceramic Fuel Cells bankrupt

ASX-listed solid-oxide fuel-cell maker Ceramic Fuel Cells is in administration, the Australian equivalent of bankruptcy. The company had 2014 revenue of $4.74 million and a loss of $16.62 million and never posted a profitable year for its home-scale combined-heat-and-power fuel-cell units, shown in the display room below.