A fuel cell power plant includes a plurality of fuel cell stacks which are operatively associated with each other so that both the air stream and fuel stream for the stacks are shared by each of the stacks in the power plant. The air and fuel streams are fed into an initial stack stage in the power plant, and after the air and fuel streams pass through the initial stack stage, the fuel exhaust streams are then fed into one or more subsequent stack stages in the power plant. The fuel streams are passed from the initial fuel cell stack stage to the subsequent fuel cell stack stage by means of a common manifold on which each of the fuel cell stacks in the power plant is mounted. The air streams are routed to all of the fuel cell stacks via a channel in the common manifold.