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The structure of planar solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC) stack is significant for its performances. Compared with internal manifold structure, the stack with external manifold has a lot of advantages including low cost, larger active area in each cell, easy stack assembly, so itis suitable for applying in big plant. Among SOFC stack studies, few have investigated the stack with external manifold. In this paper, a 1kW SOFC stack with external manifold was operated under two different conditions, in which included 30 anode-supported planar cells with size of 110mm×110mm. One wasconducted in the test bench for SOFC stack with heating furnace, which theperformance of the stack showed a power out of 1.24 kW within hydrogen and airat 750 oC. The other was operated on an independent SOFC system,which about 100h tests has been performed to evaluate the long term stabilityof stack in system. The results indicate that the stack with external manifoldcan achieve excellent performance in both test bench and system, and the temperature gradient in stack can directly affect performance and degradation of stack in system.