IF New York City had a power blackout, the Central Park police station would continue to glow like a beacon inside a dark forest. That's because the station gets all its electricity from a 200- kilowatt fuel cell right outside the building, not from utility lines. The fuel cell, which is about the size of a small delivery truck, produces a reassuring low hum. Fuel cells are one of the cleanest and most efficient technologies for producing electricity. They turn oxygen and hydrogen into electricity in the presence of electrolytes, charged particles in solution.
Fuel cells emit negligible amounts of pollutants.
In this age of rolling blackouts, fuel cells are often seen as a reliable source of backup power. The end user has the generator capacity right at their doorstep, so there's no relying on transmission and distribution lines. And by virtue of that, you're more certain that you have reliable power. NASA financed fuel cell projects in the 1960's and 70's in an effort to develop compact generators for its spacecraft. Most of the commercially available fuel cells today use phosphoric acid as the electrolyte.