Slashdot has a link today to the world’s first fuel-cell uninteruptable power supply/backup generator. Fuel cells silently mix hydrogen and oxygen and produce water vapour and electricity, and the mass-to-power ratio is an order of magnitude better than traditional NiCad, NiMh and LIon cells. No moving parts means fantastically long duty cycles, and hot-swappable fuel cannisters means that you can run your generator through very long outages (or on long stays in the desert — Burning Man, anyone?). The downside is that this is still fantastically expensive stuff. The generator and a 24-hour supply of fuel costs $10,000, and a day’s worth of replacement canisters costs about $3700 more. I’m not sure why this is so — the canisters are just hydrogen, after all. It’s the most common element in the universe, ferchrissakes.LinkDiscuss