tagged w/ Bloom Box
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An electricity-generating fuel-cell system known as the Bloom Box sparked a huge buzz in the energy debate six months ago — and since then, still more ventures have surfaced to promise better living through chemistry.
Will future fuel cells make good on those promises? We should know in the next couple of years.
One of the concepts, detailed on Monday at an American Chemical Society meeting in Boston, combines the environmental friendliness of solar power with the 24/7 capability of fuel-cell generation. When the sun shines, electricity from solar panels would feed into a personal power grid, and also split water into hydrogen and oxygen. When the sun isn't out, the hydrogen and oxygen can be recombined to keep the electricity flowing, producing pure water in the process.
"Our goal is to make each home its own power system," Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained in a news release discussing the system. "We're working toward development of 'personalized' energy units that can be manufactured, distributed and installed inexpensively. There certainly are major obstacles to be overcome — existing fuel cells and solar cells must be improved, for instance. Nevertheless, one can envision villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic system."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38817952/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_energy/An electricity-generating fuel-cell system known as the Bloom Box sparked a huge buzz... more
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In the past few days, numerous stories have focused on Bloom Energy’s technology, its costs, and whether its technology will eventually arrive in the home. In many ways, all of these stories have missed the forest for the trees.
Bloom Energy’s value proposition boils down to one simple statement: customers are virtually guaranteed to save money.
Consider: at least in California, customers can buy a Bloom box for between $700,000 and $800,000 or so, and generate electricity for about 9 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (with about 9 cents per kWh going to the costs of the Bloom Box versus and additional 5 kWh to pay for the fuel, natural gas, according to Lux Research). Versus a utility cost of between 13 and 14 cents per kWh, customers should be able to pay back the cost of the Bloom Box in between 3 to 5 years. This has all been well reported.
But for some reason, Bloom has not called a great deal of attention to its service contract, which covers the cost of maintenance and upgrades. How long will the individual fuel cells last before they need to be replaced? To a customer, it doesn’t matter. How many fuel cells will need to be replaced over the life of its server? Again, it’s an irrelevant question. If something breaks, Bloom fixes it, for free. If something needs replacing, Bloom takes care of it. It’s why so may top-tier companies were on stage backing Bloom.
A customer like Wal-Mart needs an ironclad guarantee before it can
commit to a new technology. Coca-Cola, Federal Express, Google, and
Staples are no different. But Bloom is selling them an on-campus power source that the
company is virtually guaranteeing will pay for itself in as little as
three years, and will last through ten. What’s not to like?
What’s the downside risk? Two far-fetched possibilities, in my mind:
first, that the price of electricity will decrease, invalidating the
investment, and two, that the Bloom fuel cells will crumble back into
powder before the warranty has expired. Neither seems likely.
It’s worth pointing out that a number of companies compete with Bloom in
the solid-oxide fuel-cell space: the U.K.’s Ceres Power began
production late last year, and Australia’s Ceramic Fuel Cells is also
selling units to customers. In the U.S., ClearEdge is ramping toward
production, as is Acumentrics. But in KR Sridhar, Bloom has the sort of
charismatic, slightly arrogant chief executive that Silicon Valley types
seem to adore.
Also somewhat lost in the shuffle: Bloom’s green-power credentials are a
bit flimsy. Solid-oxide fuel cells produce carbon dioxide, and Bloom’s
server produces 773 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. According to state
emissions data compiled by the EPA’s
eGrid database (and sourced by Forbes,
in a nice examination of the numbers behind Bloom) the electricity
produced by California’s own grid is 540 pounds/MWH – substantially less
than the CO2 output generated by the Bloom technology. Only when you
move a Bloom box out of California does its green credibility reemerge;
New York’s grid, for example, generates 828 lb/MWh. A state like
Arizona, which most likely would embrace solar, generates 1,158 lb/MWh.
Ironically, California’s electricity prices are some of the highest in
the nation, so the Bloom servers make less sense outside of the Golden
State’s borders.
There’s also something to be said for the simplicity of what Bloom is
selling. Solarbuzz.com
surveys the price of solar modulators, batteries, inverters,
regulators each month, and derives a price for a typical installation.
For a pair of 50-kilowatt solar arrays (individually priced at about
$313,710) a 100-kilowatt solar array would total about $617,000,
slightly less than a Bloom server. However, the price in kWh is also
higher — 25.03 cents per kWh, under perpetually sunny skies — because a
solar panel can’t produce power during the night.
But the Solarbuzz survey also can't always take into account the
variance in solar exposure, retail prices, taxation, and rebates, among
other factors — variables that a CFO would have to factor in. And there's the space savings, too: even across
the sprawling campuses of corporate Silicon Valley, a roof-mounted solar
array might not be able to power an entire building.
Incidentally, potential customers might want to take a look at Bloom’s
temperature tolerances. The Bloom servers can withstand temperature
ranges of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade – just 32 degrees to 104
degrees Fahrenheit. In San Jose, where temperatures barely
topped 100 last year, only a record heat wave would push the Bloom
box over its limit. (I'm assuming cold weather would be less of an
issue, since a Bloom box should be able to be installed indoors, where a
vent could disburse the carbon dioxide.)
But even though an “extreme weather kit” is available (an umbrella?) the
temperature limitations would seem to rule out Sacramento, where the
Sacramento Municipal Utility District already offers its customers
shares in a solar array it operates. And doesn’t a constant, home-grown
supply of power make the most sense during a heat wave, when brownouts
are common? In retrospect, February was a great time to launch: not too
hot, not too cold.
But for the customer, the bottom line is the bottom line.
I spoke with T.J. Rodgers, an engineer, chief executive of Cypress
Semiconductor, and a Bloom board member, where I asked about the service
contract. Does it matter if a fuel cell fails? What does the service
contract say? “It doesn’t matter,” Rodgers said. “All I pay for is the
fuel.”
If they were smart, Bloom’s sales executives will use the same line in
future contracts. I overheard Scott Sandell, a partner with New
Enterprise Associates and a Bloom board member, telling another VC that
Bloom soon hopes to sign a contract with a customer that will “make the
company”. Sandell also pointed out, publicly, that Bloom’s costs have dropped by more than 25 times since 2004, with the implications that they’ll drop further.
In some ways, whether or not Bloom can ever lower the price low enough to install a home unit is irrelevant. What’s important is that it can meet the demand from its enterprise customers, and avoid running into manufacturing glitches. (We still don’t know where Bloom manufactures its fuel cells.)
Bloom’s pitch should be that its servers are like buying a
luxury car: with all scheduled maintenance guaranteed, plus a warranty,
all customers have to supply is the fuel.
http://goo.gl/fb/1z5xIn the past few days, numerous stories have focused on Bloom Energy’s... more
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After years of secrecy, Bloom Energy today finally unveiled the Bloom Energy Server, better known as the Bloom Box. It uses novel fuel cell technology to produce electricity from a combination of oxygen, heat and a fuel source like natural gas or biogas, and it is small enough to sit relatively inconspicuously on company property.
The device, already in use at eBay, Google and several other company campuses and distribution centers, has been hyped as a potential game-changer in the energy and power generation conversation.
Whether or not it ever gets down to the anticipated price tag of around $3,000 and becomes viable on a residential scale, the Bloom Box raises questions of what type of energy future we should be planning for. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100224/does-bloom-box-signal-shift-toward-decentralized-electricity-generationAfter years of secrecy, Bloom Energy today finally unveiled the Bloom Energy Server,... more
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Watch the 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl:
The internet loves mysterious product unveilings, especially those promising to revolutionize the world and how we live in it. (Think Apple’s iPhone.) But few (except for maybe the iPhone) actually live up to the hype. (Or so I hear. Anyone wanna get me an iPhone?)
Now, after nearly a decade of secrecy, Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar is coming out of the shadows to tell the world how his “Bloom Box” will do all of this and more as a “zero-emissions” mini-power plant. Bloom Energy debuted its heady energy dreams in an exclusive interview on 60 Minutes this past Sunday, with the company’s official launch to come on Wednesday at early customer eBay’s California headquarters. Google, Wal-Mart, and FedEx have also been quietly testing these heavily-subsidized magic boxes on their premises, with encouraging energy and cost savings thus far.
But, zero emissions? A backyard power plant-in-a-box? Sounds fancy, but what is a Bloom Box and is it really the next “energy breakthrough”?
The Bloom Box is a fuel cell, not an energy source.
According to CBS, it’s “a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There’s no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.”
But the box still requires a fuel source, which 60 Minutes interviewer Lesley Stahl glosses over in a few sentences:
To make power, you’d still need fuel. Many past fuel cells failed because they needed expensive pure hydrogen. Not this box.
“Our system can use fossil fuels like natural gas. Our system can use renewable fuels like landfill gas, bio-gas,” Sridhar told Stahl. “We can use solar.”
CNN’s Fortune Brainstorm blog explains things a little better:
“Hydrocarbons such as natural gas or biofuel (stored in an adjacent tank) are pumped into the Bloom Box—ceramic plates stacked atop each other to form modules that can be assembled into a unit of any size—and out comes abundant, reliable, cleaner electricity.”
(Take a look here for a few reasons natural gas isn’t always the “cleaner electricity” it’s made out to be.)
UPDATE: The original quote by the Christian Science Monitor incorrectly tried to explain how the Bloom Box might use renewable vs. fossil fuels. CO2 would not be emitted from “whatever power plant is feeding the Bloom Box,” but instead, would be a by-product of the methane fuel feeding it (whether it’s from natural gas or landfill gas). Fuel could not (and should not) come directly from solar or wind, because that’s an inefficient use of electricity, which is difficult to store and should be used immediately. The “zero emissions” claim only holds up in the same way that biofuels take CO2 out of the system upstream. Bloom Boxes would likely be using natural gas most of the time, which is far from zero emissions.
Venture capitol blog VentureBeat hones in on some of the more interesting points about this invention:
“Right now, it’s available on a large scale, with each box costing as much as $800,000. In the next five to ten years, Bloom says it will release smaller boxes for individual households costing less than $3,000. If this happens, there is a chance that Bloom Boxes could [supplant] utilities and long-distance transmission lines—not to mention capital intensive wind farms and solar arrays.”
I could imagine these boxes perhaps replacing million-dollar-a-mile transmission lines, but I doubt the Bloom Box will electrify the power industry if it’s supposedly replacing many of the clean energy sources it would require for fuel.
And with this list of 10 Fuel Cell Startups Hot On Bloom Energy’s Trail, Earth2Tech emphasizes that Bloom isn’t the only company out there trying to master fuel cell technology: “In fact, stationary fuel cells—devices that chemically convert hydrogen into electricity and water, or hydrogen-containing fuels into power, water and various byproducts—are already a highly-populated industry.”
Here’s the best analogy I’ve come up with for the potential of the Bloom Box: It isn’t the internet; that would be the fuel, which may or may not be renewable. The Bloom Box is more akin to the wireless router—rather than the dial-up modem—that gets the internet to your laptop (aka your house). But right now it’s one heck of a pricey router.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-02-22-what-the-heck-is-a-bloom-box-and-will-it-solve-the-worlds-energy/Watch the 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl:
The internet loves mysterious... more
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February 22, 2010
The “60 Minutes” Bloom Box segment Sunday night introduced the world to a previously anonymous and intensely secretive company with a very attractive message: Cheap, clean energy that flows almost magically from a refrigerator-sized box.
Bloom Box: What 60 Minutes Left Out…Info that didn’t air on TV…VIDEO…click here..http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/bloom-box-what-60-minutes-left-out-info-that-didnt-air-on-tv-video/
This TV debut – a big scoop for CBS News – brought viewers behind the scenes of Bloom Energy and two of its customers, eBay and Google. But the television spot didn’t tell the whole story. Several chunks of the interview were Web-exclusive and other news organizations, including an upcoming report from the Monitor, have uncovered new perspective on the team behind Bloom Box.February 22, 2010
The “60 Minutes” Bloom Box segment Sunday night... more
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http://tinyurl.com/ylgjwj9
This is secretive fuel cell company Bloom Energy’s big week. Tonight 60 Minutes aired an exclusive look inside the Bloom Box, and on Wednesday the company is officially launching, after operating for 8 years and having reportedly raised around $400 million from investors like Kleiner Perkins.
Watch the video clips,, to see what the Bloom Box actually looks like — kindof like an industrial-sized refrigerator, that sucks up oxygen on one side and fuel (natural gas, biomass, etc) on the other. 60 Minute’s reporter Lesley Stahl takes a look at the “secret sauce” behind the Bloom Box, and reports that Bloom bakes sand and cuts it into little squares that are turned into a ceramic, which are then coated with green and black “inks.” Using a special process Bloom creates these ceramic discs and stacks them together interspersed with metal plates of “a cheap metal alloy.” The bigger the stack the more power the Bloom Box will create.
http://tinyurl.com/ylgjwj9http://tinyurl.com/ylgjwj9
This is secretive fuel cell company Bloom Energy’s... more
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