The Department of Energy has initiated this program to advance electric utility cell stack technology and to reduce cell stack cost. The cell stack has a nominal 10-ft/sup 2/ active area and operates at 120 psia/405/sup 0/F. The program comprises six parallel phases, which culminate in a full-height, 10-ft/sup 2/ stack verification test: Phase I provides the information and services needed to manage the effort, including definition of the prototype commercial power plant; Phase II develops the technical base for long-term improvements to the cell stack; Phase III develops materials and processing techniques for cell stack components incorporating the best available technology; Phase IV provides the design of hardware and conceptual processing layouts, and updates the power plant definition of Phase I to reflect the results of Phases II and III; Phase V manufactures the hardware to verify the achievements of Phases II and III, and analyzes the cost of this hardware; and Phase VI tests the cell stacks assembled from the hardware of Phase V to assess the state of development.