power units.

No question, this is a high profile sale for Plug Power. The fuel cell industry has noticed that the pockets of government are deep (see here for news of multi-million dollar grant awarded by the US Dept of Energy and the European Commission a couple of weeks ago) and so emergency services communications may turn out to be the emerging niche market for backup power from fuel cells.

The advantage of a fuel cell for backup power is that it is 99.9999% reliable whereas a typical diesel generator is 99.98% reliable. This is known as 6 nines reliability. The police contract comes two weeks after the appointment of a new CFO for PlugPower.

Not many companies would be optimisitic following a $84m loss - but Fuel Cell Energy is. They anticipate significant funding from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund - see here and Elemental Power Corp who want to build a 30 megawatt fuel cell plant in Danbury.

Where there are clear grounds for optimism though are in the research and development contract backlog - worth $30.1 m as of Oct. 31, compared to $15.8 million 12 months earlier.

However, the cynic in me though suggests that this might be further evidence that fuel cells aren't about to go mainstream because there's still too much R&D; to be done.