On make day, a small cheese room heats milk in a jacketed vat, holds it at temperature for culturing and coagulation, then cuts, stirs and drains curd. A batch pasteuriser may run beforehand. Afterwards, wheels go into an ageing room or cave that has to hold steady temperature and humidity for weeks or months, with a cooling unit, humidifier and fans running quietly all the time.
An outage during a make can stall a vat at the wrong temperature. A long outage in summer lets an ageing room warm and dry, cracking rinds and encouraging the wrong moulds on wheels that may represent a whole season of milk.
The UPS-mode inverter and LiFePO4 battery take the load instantly, so vat controllers, thermometers and the ageing room controller do not reset. The fuel cell then supplies the steady load from hydrogen stored at 30 bar or less. A small ageing room's cooling and humidifier are modest loads that the stored hydrogen can carry for a long time.
How it works →
Electrically heated vats and pasteurisers can be heavy, and heating from hydrogen at 30% or less round-trip efficiency costs more than heating from the grid. In an outage, many cheesemakers would protect the ageing room first and finish or delay a make depending on the stage. A small vat often fits within 15 kW alongside the ageing room. Larger plants would need the pilot to size a larger or multi-unit setup.
A small electrically heated vat may fit within 15 kW. Heating from hydrogen is energy-expensive, though, so most cheesemakers would protect the ageing room first in a long outage. The pilot would check what fits.
Yes. The humidifier and controller run on the backed-up supply and the switch-over is instant, so conditions stay steady through the outage without anyone resetting the controller or rushing out to the cave in the middle of the night.
No. It is designed to keep equipment running through outages. Your food safety plan, records and what you do with a batch interrupted by an outage remain your responsibility and your verifier's.
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