My interest in alternative fuels is for telecom - not only my area of personal expertise but a necessary infrastructure asset in a post-oil world. A fuel cell at the right price point can replace backup generators today, but ammonia could potentially just run the ICE generator as well.

For these standby applications, maintenance is a significant issue, so a long-lived, high-reliability fuel cell would offer many advantages over ICE generators. With subsidies even hydrogen fuel cells come close to break-even, according to those doing trials. I need to look at cost numbers (fuel, engine/fuel cell, maintenance, support, etc.) for NH3 and better understand pros and cons.

A low-cost reversible process would permit a new set of applications that cannot be cost effectively addressed by batteries today. Peak shaving with off-peak charging would be the initial goal, followed by local charging with sporadic wind and solar. Flow batteries are the best option I've come up with so far, and I'm looking at costs for the vanadium solution now.

I'm 100% behind adding NH3 to the option list for wind storage -- that's going to be a critical need. Cost is important, but any process than can readily deal with the sporadic nature of wind can tolerate some added cost -- peak-ready loads are valuable just like on-demand generation in flattening out the supply/demand curves.

Nice to see a genuine expert showing up to comment on this area, since I'm pretty much helpless there.

You should write at length and further school us on this topic - a few more paragraphs wouldn't kill you, would it? :-)

This table illustrates fuel cell incentives for a few states, as compiled by BCI (a renewable energy vendor/integrater):

               Incentive                                        State        Federal
Federal         30% tax credit or $3,000 per KW                              30%
Connecticut     Local option property tax exemption             $405*  
Florida         75% tax credit of capital and        
                operating costs, up to $12,000 per unit         $12,000
                Sales tax exemption(6%)                         $1,169*
Maryland        30% tax credit or $1,000/kW         
                if fuel cells serve a green building            $5,000
New York        20% tax credit up to $1,500 per 
                unit; includes installation costs               $1,500
Washington      Sales tax exemption(7% -9.3%)                   $1,364*

At a fuel cell installed cost of $5K-$7K per kw, they show an advantage over batteries over the long-term for new-build application where a battery system would require a chassis and HVAC. This is perhaps not universally the case, so batteries will probably still "win" for some applications even with the incentives.