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bmac - I think you have made a big mistake in your sums.
More to the point is that similar companies in this sector, ITM and Ceres have mcaps of £320 million on a few £million of sales and still making a loss.
It may not take that long at all to achieve that and would put our so around the 80p mark.

I think you have the wrong board if you think you will have impact here with your nonsense. Maybe best to jog along elsewhere.

Thanks Wolfy, this looks like it explains what it does.
I think I will need to read it several times!
But looks like the new electrode is a five layer sandwich of
gas diffusion layer
electrode
membrane
electrode
gas diffusion layer.

So it will all be in contact in the five layer sandwich. I am sure this will mean a new set of testing.
Hopefully they have already started.
Or maybe they will find it follows the present degradation if the electrodes are the weakest link and the membrane layer is more stable. Perhaps if that they will have confidence without a full 18 months (+).

Doh! Was too late at night, well spotted Bumble.
Yes, it sounds like the H+ will pass through the membrane but the OH- will not.
A while ago someone posted a link to a patent application for the membrane.
I don't remember many details, but I have a mental image of the membrane being almost like a 'gel coating' with the electrode material, so indeed did seem to be directly in contact with/integral to the electrode.

So, it might be that this can get better distribution of ions to where they are needed than the liquid electrolyte. It might be this that gets the 5x power output.

And yes Athansius the prospects for this market are stunning. The billion dollar Nafthion market was not for all possible applications, so I think you are still being a bit conservative on the full potential (LOL).

They say they have been working on it for two years. If they need to test for 18 months to find out how long it lasts we can only hope they have already started.

A membrane like this seems to have many potential uses, not only fuel cells/electrolysis, but in the chlor alkali industry and medical monitoring equipment as well as probably lots of other things. Presumably it would be up to the medical equipment manufacturer to licence it and use it for their product. They would have a range of thicknesses to choose what best suits them.

I tried looking at what Nafion is. From what I can understand (!) it seems to be a membrane which allows anions (so H+) to pass through, but not cations (so O-).

This might mean that the new membrane is much better at transporting a steady flow of H+ and O- to the electrodes than the fluid electrolyte. From previous videos of electrolyte/gas flow to the electrodes, it all improved a lot when they added new flow holes, but there were still areas of electrode without good flow. I may be very wrong, but maybe that is what achieves 5X more power density than the liquid. I am assuming they are the same electrodes, but again that could be wrong. If they had a much better set of electrodes, why not use them in the (L) form after all.

About the two types being complementary as the liquid cell can act as a scrubber for ammonia contaminant, it sounds like if your hydrogen is particulary poor you are better off with the liquid type. Not that the two types would be used together to scrub. Again I may be wrong.

All this is amazing news. I have not posted today as I have been speechless with excitement at the massive potential of all this. It sounds as if the Nafion type membrane has many applications and is difficult and expensive to make. As far as I remember from the last AGM, our membrane was said to be something like a quarter the price. If this is a billion dollar a year market then the membrane alone could be a company maker getting the sp to £1. Once this is all working and out to market any potential take over price for AFC must have just jumped!

I just got a confirmatory email too.

A massive thank you to Chippyjo for all his hard work if this has made a difference to the new communications.
All great news. Well done AFC. Exciting times.

Thanks Notes, very flattered to be on your list.
I also wondered if there might be selection!!

Great news that everything remains on track.
New website during November, launch of charger during December and an invitation to Dunsfold for shareholders in the pipeline.
Great news that things are all progressing for EV charger, addition of ammonia cracker, higher power density fuel cell.
Exciting that the higher power density fuel cell could compete with fuel cells used in the transport sector with the advantage of being able to use lower purity hydrogen. This could be very big.

Well done AFC.
Also well done chippyjo if the shareholder group did anything to hasten this communication.
Still note that the current state of the website is terrible and does not reflect the state of AFC. - Shocking that we are still waiting for this to be brought up to date.
Also note that today's share price changes reflect that this is price sensitive information. It should be released to the market in a timely way and should not be witheld until a shareholder group is convened.

Thanks for help Klunk, but not those, they don't come out until March/April, so are not published in November.

Bumble B, where are you seeing a detailed report in mid November last year please?
I am sure you are right, but I cant find this anywhere.

I raised the question of communication/PR at the AGM.
The AFC website is vital to this.
Many months on we still have a terrible outdated website.
I wish to comment that I am not satisfied with this.

Also interesting is that they are now aiming at costs. Mass manufacturing will hopefully be able to bring down the cost per kWh.

Am looking back at page 10 of the 2018 AGM presentation where they showed expected cost for different longevity. Was vague at the time but arm waving around cost target was hoped to be about half way up the y axis. We are now looking at 4 year longevity, or perhaps less than this if performance is shorter in the stack, we are possibly at very well below 10 cents per kWh. Perhaps this graph is all out of date by now, but if still valid it looks great. I understand why they wont want to publicise true costs though!

Great news! Well done to AFC and De Nora.
Finally really looking at producing products to deliver to customers!
The move from lab to delivering products was always going to take some time and work. Easy to overlook that we would need this stage in the process.

Does raise more questions though. Hopefully there will be a proactive interview today to answer some of them. We had been told De Nora had existing capacity to produce 20Mw in Germany. Are we working on that volume, or is this work towards larger capacity. Desertwolf has quoted.

At present, De Nora has confirmed it has the ability to supply requested electrode delivery for the initial placement and commercialisation of AFC Energy's fuel cell system, including the EV charger demonstration, expected to be delivered in Q4 2019.

So does that mean that 20Mw would be available within the year, or not. Suppose that any orders will take a while to go through the pipeline and if installations need planning permission, building sheds etc it will be a while before customers want delivery anyway.

But I agree with BumbleB that it sounds as if the one year testing they planned for this electrode is now concluded and has been a success. I may be wrong and perhaps they will continue with this test.

What they have done is test for one year and use a statistical model to predict how things will be at 4 years. The model gives a range of likely outcomes, not a concrete answer.
To have definitive answer about state of electrodes at four years would need a further three years of testing. Hopefully we will have new generations of better electrodes and the new high power stack in use by then.
It is not clear from the RNS whether they have now finished the one year test on this electrode and have the information they want, or whether they plan to continue this test.

I agree the RNS is not very clear, but it reads to me that they have now done what they wanted to predict 4 years longevity and longer. This is fantastic news.
Yes, sounds like there will be continued development but that will always be the case if we want to keep ahead of competition. Great that De Nora still think there can be improvements leading to cheaper costs and are on board with working towards them.
It sounds a bit clearer from the De Nora announcement highlights below, point 3.
Great news that De Nora are now working in mass production process, so they have electrodes they are happy to take to market.

Highlights
1) Results of twelve-month operation of fuel cell electrode at AFC Energy's head office supports potential to achieve electrode life expectancy, for continuous use operations, in excess of four years.
2) Over the twelve-month test, electrode degradation rates have continued to improve with time.
3) Four-year electrode lifetime consistent with targeted commercial longevity necessary to drive down cost of power and achieve a power conversion cost of < US$0.10 / kWh (excl. fuel cost).
4) AFC Energy and De Nora continue to develop the electrode technology and are confident that further improvements in electrode performance and reduction in cost are feasible.

I don;t remember when this was said exactly. Either the last AGM or the one before I think.
The need for warranty might have also have been mentioned in the post AGM podcast on the Friday after the AGM this year. Something about needing a warranty and a better balance sheet. 'But it is coming' as we get warranties for the individual components. Something like that.

We were told that a warranty was needed for those contracts in S Korea.
But also something had gone wrong and all the people AFC had been talking to in Korea had been sacked. I don't remember the details of why. It was nothing to do with AFC.

You are posting very early Bumble!

Yes, oh for the balmy days of 2015 when there were timelines and they were met..
But to be fair, it is much more difficult now that progress depends on a lot of other people and it may not be down to AFC themselves when timelines slip.

Thinking about the 'holy grail' of 4 years longevity though, it is not immediately essential to progress.

1) It seems to be a standard for De Nora electrodes and warranty. Obviously it will be a big plus to AFC to get to this.
A signed contract with De Nora for production and warranty would be a big boost and likely enhance the share price so that further fundraising is less painful dilution wise.
It would also probably help with selling 100s of MW fuel cell facilities to people who need a warranty.
However, this may only really happen when the company looks as it it will still be there in 20 years to provide replacement electrodes and honour the warranty. A way to go building up the company via the smaller installations first.

b) The other reason for increasing longevity towards the 4 year point was to reduce the cost and reach a commercial price point where profit could be made.
The graphs of cost and longevity included in the 2017 and 2018 AGM presentations show that the cost benefit between '3-4 years' and '4 years' becomes very small.
On this score I think we are good to go with what we have. Real cost benefits from here are more to do with bringing production costs down than extra longevity.

So what I am getting at is that 4 years will be lovely when we get there, but it isn't the end of the world if it takes a while longer (in my opinion anyway). It seems to be a set in stone target for De Nora more than it is a definitive point for AFC making progress on getting product out to market.