This paper presents a methodology for modeling and calculating the reliability and availability of low power portable direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). System reliability and availability are critical factors for improving market acceptance and for determining the competitiveness of the low power DMFC. Two techniques have been used for analyzing the system reliability and availability requirements for various system components. Reliability block diagram (RBD) is formed based oil the failure rates of irreparable system components. A state-space method is developed to calculate system availability using the Markov model (MM). The state-space method incorporates three different states-operational, derated, and fully faulted states. Since most system components spend their lifetime in performing normal functional task, this research is focused mainly on this operational period. The failure and repair rates for repairable DMFC systems are estimated on the basis of a homogeneous Poisson process (HPP) and exponential distribution. Extensive analytical modeling and simulation study has been performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed technique. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.