When rocket scientist K. Sridhar founded the technology startup that would become Bloom Energy in — and famously introduced its electricity-generating "box" to the world in during a "60 Minutes" segment — his inspiration was a photograph snapped from outer space illustrating the vast swaths of planet Earth still in the dark, unconnected to the electric grid.
Bloom's solid oxide fuel cells generate electricity through an electrochemical reaction, rather than through a combustion process, which distinguishes its approach from on-site cogeneration options. Increasingly, the company has forged lucrative deals with utilities including Southern Co.
Bloom's scale is still relatively modest. During the third quarter, which ended Sept. In its investor update, Bloom said it closed a record "acceptances" during the three-month period. We are experiencing a post-climate-change world. You need to address electricity not in a single dimension, but in many: reliability; resiliency; sustainability. In a strategy borrowed from the high-tech industry, Bloom is focusing on ways it can integrate its platform with other components, such as energy storage, and inverters that allow it to be installed alongside solar equipment.
This is different from biofuels," Sridhar said, pointing to one possible scenario in which small hamlets, villages or communities could create small microgrids powered using local waste sources such as animal manure, human excrement or plant refuse. Individuals and businesses could "pay by the drink" for the electricity they use, in much the way many people in emerging nations are adopting mobile phone technology, he predicted.
One issue remains the distribution link: it's incredibly expensive to "pipe" biogas across a region to a central location. That's why Bloom is advocating an approach that would see its equipment colocated at capture sources. Meanwhile, though, Bloom is out to make its mark in the commercial world. During the series of presentations in mid-December, Sridhar and other members of the Bloom executive team touted several factors that they say help the company close deals for its fuel cells.
Is it too good to be true? February 22, Its inventor wants to put one in every home by On Wednesday, Mr. Sridhar will make a major public announcement in Silicon Valley unveiling Bloom Box.
Fuel cells are the building blocks of the Bloom Box. Each fuel cell has the potential to power one light bulb. The fuel cells are stacked into brick-sized towers sandwiched with metal alloy plates. The fuel cell stacks are housed in a refrigerator-sized unit — the Bloom Box. Oxygen is drawn into one side of the unit, and fuel fossil-fuel, bio-fuel, or even solar power can be used is fed into the other side.
The two combine within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy with no burning, no combustion, and no power lines.
Sridhar spent close to a decade inventing the Bloom Box. It grew, he explained to 60 Minutes, from a device he originally invented to produce oxygen on Mars. Cost is always a concern with fuel cells, as is round-the-clock, functionality. Bloom Energy still has to figure out how to mass-produce the unit and get its costs down low enough to outfit every home with a Bloom Box, Mr. Kanellos said on 60 Minutes. Bloom Energy has also been cryptically silent about its new device.
At that rate, the Bloom Boxes should pay for themselves within three years, Donahoe told the business-news site Fast Company. A residential Bloom Box should cost around U. Those high prices are due in part to the fact that home fuel cell systems have been built by hand and because low demand hasn't allowed manufacturers to achieve economies of scale—for example to negotiate cheaper prices for raw materials in the way that large production runs allow—said Brown of UTC Power.
Previous systems have also used the precious metal platinum, though Bloom Energy says they've found a way around this—though the details are under wraps—according to Prinz, of Stanford University.
Solid oxide fuel cells must operate at extremely high temperatures, and as a result, they often crack or leak. For the Bloom Box to become widely adopted by homeowners—who would presumably be nervous about replacing old reliable technology with a new, relatively untested one—the system will need an operational lifetime of about 85, hours, or about ten years, Brown said. There are commercial fuel cells, such as ones made by UTC Power, that can operate continuously for that long, Brown said.
Bloom Energy has not disclosed the operational lifetime of its Bloom Box. It's also unclear as of yet how energy efficient the Bloom Boxes are, Brown said. Fuel cell systems in which both the generated electricity and heat are used can be 90 percent or more energy efficient. Bloom Energy has not released specific details about the Bloom Box's energy efficiency or specified whether the heat produced by its units can be utilized.
That would make the Bloom Box only about 5 to 10 percent more efficient than conventional combined cycle gas turbine CCGT power plants, Brown said. Such plants create electricity in two phases: first via gas turbines, then via steam turbines, which take advantage of excess heat generated in the first phase. Whitney Colella, a fuel cell researcher at Sandia National Laboratories, said the Bloom Box appears to be very similar to fuel cell systems developed by United Technologies Corp.
While most experts seem to agree that the current Bloom Box appears to be a fairly standard solid oxide fuel cell system, Bloom Energy has filed patents in recent years that hint at a possible killer feature that could set its future devices apart from the competition, Greentech Media's Kanellos said. The patents describe a process for taking the runoff of the main electricity generation—carbon dioxide and water—and using it to produce oxygen and a "methane-like fuel," he said.
This would essentially reverse the chemical reaction in the Bloom Box—a possibility Sridhar hinted at on 60 Minutes. That new fuel and oxidant could be automatically run through the Bloom Box to generate even more electricity—and less waste. The big Bloom Energy Servers already in use don't currently do this, but if such a reverse-reaction is possible—and it's not clear that it is—then "it would be huge," Kanellos said.
All rights reserved. How Bloom Box Should Work, Basically At the heart of the Bloom Box will be solid oxide fuel cells—in this case, flat, coaster-size ceramic plates with a secret coating—widely considered by experts to be one of the most efficient types of fuel cells. Bloom Box Safe and Solid? Bloom Energy's Killer App? Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London.
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