Blog: Stack Up – POWERAhead: Diversifying our Supply Chain

Stack Up – POWERAhead: Diversifying our Supply Chain

By: Andy Marsh

October 9, 2014

Diversifying our supply chain has been a key initiative at Plug Power in 2014. It was the primary reason Plug Power acquired ReliOn this past April. ReliOn has a leading edge air-cooled stack technology that is applicable to our class-3 GenDrive product offering. As previously announced, Plug Power will be launching the first class-3 GenDrive unit with a Plug Power-ReliOn stack in the fourth quarter.

Since the acquisition, Plug Power has been aggressively pursuing the stack integration into our class-3 GenDrive products – we’ve verified the product at customer sites, established manufacturing and developed an enhanced supply chain for the major components. Our new ReliOn engineers (now Plug Power engineers) have exceeded our expectations in the speed of implementing this product.

Our design intent for this offering was to improve performance and lower cost. The design team has done both by working with leading MEA (membrane electrode assembly) providers to develop a stack with superior performance that allows for less physical area, enabling a lower cost. We have met our goal.

In a future blog, we will discuss our stack development for the class-1 and class-2 GenDrive products.