$1.8 Million Offered for Fuel Cell Research

The Federal Energy Technology Center (FETC) of the Department of Energy has released the "Multi-Layer Ceramic Fuel Cell Research" Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to solicit basic and applied research applications to advance the art of high temperature solid state fuel cell design and manufacturing.

The agency anticipates awarding a total of $1.8 million in first-year funding through the solicitation. There is a mandatory 20 percent cost share required for each proposal. The contemplated award instrument is a cost-reimbursement cost sharing contract. The solicitation is open to individuals, educational institutions, large and small businesses or all other organizations.

The focus of the BAA is manufacturing processes resulting in lower cost fuel cell stacks or improving cell/stack robustness, life reliability, availability and maintainability. Proposals will not be accepted for building large fuel cell stacks or tube bundles, demonstrations and integrated systems testing.

While the deadline for the BAA is June 7, 2000, the FETC expects to conduct three proposal review cycles. Two will be held during the year and the last will be held immediately following the close of the BAA. The first review cycle will be for proposals received on or before July 31, 1999. The second review process will begin after February 28.

Proposals must make progress toward the ten quantified goals of the FETC Fuel Cell Program, which are enumerated in the solicitation and supporting documents.

Copies of the full "Multi-Layer Ceramic Fuel Cell Research" BAA and other FETC research funding opportunities can be downloaded from the web under the "Solicitations" heading at: http://www.fetc.gov/business/