www.bloomenergy.com announced a new fuel cell that is being tested at 5 sites (Google, ebay, Walmart (2), and FedEx) in California. These ‘energy servers’ are abut the size of a parking space and can power 80% of a Walmart store. It takes almost any fuel from ethanol to biomass and turns it into electricity.
Fuel cells are nothing new, but Bloom has figured out a way to make them cheaply and efficiently. CEO and Founder, KR Sridhar claims that a Bloom box, which he calls an energy server, is twice as efficient as the electricity grid. “For the same amount of electricity, you need half the fuel,” he says. “If you use a renewable fuel you are carbon neutral. Use all the electricity you want and don’t feel guilty about polluting the environment.”
They cost about $750,000 for a 100 kilowatt system. A typical electricity cost for commercial customers is 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour versus 13 cents for what they might pay a California utility.
Bloom fuel cells are based on a solid oxide technology, quite different than previous fuel cell approaches. It’s the result of $400M in venture funding.
60 Minutes, wont allow me to imbed their video, so there is the link:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n&tag=api
Ben, interesting article on Bloom Energy in the Economist this week: http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15580848. As always, the Economist tries to tell both sides of the story…
Talk soon,
Colman
these things are really amazing, especially if you see the who is who of internet and political figures supporting it…
I wonder if they will build Hydrogen cars with them, too…
Daniel
Bloom Energy expanding Fuel cell energy and creating residential fuel cell, perhaps hydrogen fuel cell car
Hi,very good blog post. Informations are very useful and saves me a lot time which I could spend on something else instead of googling
Thank you