Technology readiness of SOFC stacks technology - A review

The concept of technology readiness levels (TRL) had become recently popular both in Europe and Canada to evaluate the maturity of a technology or product. The classification is mandatory both in the European Union Horizon 2020 Research Program and in the Industry Canada Technology Demonstration Program. The charming simplicity of the TRL1 to TRL9 classification helps to label the maturity of a certain product concept or technology especially in the early phases of R&D. On the other hand it gives no or very limited information aboutthe actual technology readiness. To overcome this limitation IKTS has adopted and refined the technology readiness evaluation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Stacks. The fuel cell stack is the most crucial building block in a fuel cell system. Over the years Fraunhofer IKTS has developed three different SOFC stack concepts, one is commercialized by the company Sunfire in Germany, a second concept is used in eneramic systems and a third concept is about to be commercialized with other partners. The maturity of the concept is using three sets of parameters - technical performance and lifetime parameters, manufacturing and value chain parameters and market segment/commercialization aspects. It is used to compare stacks on the market or in the pipeline and to measure progress over time. Thus an indication of technology readiness, segment specific time to market and R&D needs can be developed.