Bill Mahoney, CEO, SCRA

The mission of the MidlandsBiz Podcast series is to support leadership in Giving Back, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Continuous Education, the Knowledge Economy and the Arts.

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A Conversation with Bill Mahoney, CEO, SCRA

Education. The Knowledge Economy. Giving Back.

A great overview of the current state of developing hydrogen as source of energy and the efforts of the Fuel Cell Collaborative.  What are the recent challenges and successes with investments in this area?  What opportunities lie ahead for the Midlands region and the state?

One cool current project.  Students at Richland School District Two’s new Institute of Innovation (R2i2) are witnessing the future of alternative energy in action as a hydrogen fuel cell unit – formerly in use at Fort Jackson – is being used as a backup power system at the school.

The fuel cell units were removed from Fort Jackson in the fall of 2014 following a successful five-year demonstration project under the Department of Energy’s Fuel Cell “Market Transformation” initiative. After SCRA took custody of the fuel cells at the completion of the Ft. Jackson project, the Fuel Cell Collaborative funded work to refurbish the units still suitable for service. SCRA has transferred nine of these units to M.B. Kahn to support multiple redeployment opportunities.

Fuel cell backup power systems have been used commercially for a wide variety of applications, but are ideal for protecting against power outages to critical equipment lasting eight hours or more, under which circumstances the units will continue to run as long as they are supplied with hydrogen.

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