Getting power to the people: technological dramaturgy and the quest for the electrochemical engine

Despite over 50 years of concerted effort by government and industry since the end of the Second World War, expectations for a cheap, durable commercial fuel cell have been repeatedly dashed. I argue this is so mainly because researchers have historically conceived the fuel cell as a universal chemical energy converter, a kind of super battery that combined the best aspects of battery and heat engine. Dramatic demonstrations of notional and prototype hydrogen fuel cells in controlled conditions attracted short-term investments in further research and inspired hopes that long-lived and affordable commercial fuel cells using hydrocarbons could be developed. However, building such an electrochemical engine proved a complex and costly process, one that few sponsors were willing to support for long in the absence of rapid progress. I explore these dynamics in a comparative study of the fuel cell programs of General Electric and Ballard Power Systems.