Driven by technological achievement and rational projection of commercial product cost, expectations for tubular SOFC commercialization are improving. Tubular SOFCs have surpassed 7 yrs operation and have recently demonstrated remarkable toughness in thermal cycling. Customer-owned systems with 25 kW stacks utilizing air electrode supported (AES) cells continue to operate directly on natural gas without degradation after multiple thermal cycles and over 4000 hrs operation. AES cell operation at elevated pressure corroborates theoretical estimates of performance gain without evidence of deleterious effect. Commercial class AES cell of 22 mm dia and 1500 mm length, is now in production for application to 100 kW, 50% efficient (ac/LHV), atmospheric pressure systems. This same cell applied to pressurized systems in combination with conventional turbo machinery (gas turbines) can yield an efficiency approaching 70% for power plants as small as 5 MW. Total installed system cost for commercial 5 MW SOFC/CT units for distributed power generation and on-site cogeneration should approach $1000/kW. A major challenge is formation of funded projects to demonstrate at the turn of the century prototype MW class SOFC/CT combined cycle power plants and to complete the development of commercial fuel cell manufacturing processes
