Patent ID: 8257875
Filing Date: 2012-09-04
Classification: H01M,Y02E

Abstract:
1. A system for communicating measurement data from fuel cells in a fuel cell stack, said system comprising: a plurality of fuel cells, each fuel cell generating a voltage potential; a plurality of stack plates, including one stack plate between each fuel cell and on each end of the fuel cell stack to collect the voltage potential generated by the fuel cells; a plurality of embedded smart plates, each embedded smart plate being mechanically and electrically coupled to at least one of the plurality of stack plates in the fuel cell stack, each embedded smart plate including optical transceivers on a top side and a bottom side of the smart plates, each of the embedded smart plates receiving operating power from the fuel cell stack via the voltage potential from the fuel cell adjacent to the stack plate that the embedded smart plate is coupled to; and at least one aggregator device, said at least one aggregator device including at least one optical transceiver for initiating communication with the embedded smart plate adjacent to the at least one aggregator device, wherein the aggregator device initiates communication with the embedded smart plate to initiate a series of communications between the embedded smart plates in the stack to determine the location and the measurement data collected by each of the embedded smart plates in the stack.