Bosch will receive a grant of €160.7 million from the federal government of Germany and the states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Saarland for its project for the initial industrialization of stationary solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) systems:“Bosch Power Units”.

As part of the IPCEI Hydrogen Program of the European Union (Important Projects of Common European Interest, IPCEI), the German Federal Government and the German Federal States of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Saarland are funding the Bosch Power Units project.

The aim of the funding project is to ensure the mass production and series ramp-up of the decentralized SOFC technology up to the start of series production. The Bosch project is one of the first projects in Germany to receive this funding.

The heart of the system is the SOFC stack, where chemical energy is converted into electrical energy. A hotbox will contain several stacks. This hotbox is combined with an air and gas supply system, an electronic control unit, and an exhaust system to form an SOFC unit.

When generating power the SOFC efficiency is approximately 60% at beginning of life. When the heat generated by the SOFC is also put to productive use, the SOFC system can even reach an overall efficiency of up to 90%.

Bosch’s SOFC can run on fuels such as natural gas and biomethane, which are converted to hydrogen in the fuel cell’s reformer. When the SOFC operates with natural gas or biomethane, carbon emissions are reduced by about two-thirds compared to power generation from coal. In the future, it will be possible to combine several SOFC systems, each with an output of 100 kW, to create a decentralized power supply solution in the megawatt range, Bosch says.