The Bloom Box is Coming!
Dis anyone see 60-Minutes report on the Bloom Box...a fuel cell powered by natural gas?
jhh
(CBS) For the past year and a half, several large California corporations have been secretly testing the "Bloom Box," a potentially revolutionary fuel-cell system. Confirming this for the first time, several of the companies report this system is a more efficient, clean, and cost effective way to get electricity than off the power grid.
Lesley Stahl and "60 Minutes" cameras get the first look inside the secretive California company, just days before the Bloom Energy official launch, scheduled for next Wednesday (Feb. 24).
Stahl's report will be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
John Donahoe, CEO of E-bay, confirms Bloom Boxes were installed at his corporate campus nine months ago. The company says the boxes already saved them over $100,000 in electricity bills. "It's been very successful thus far. [The Bloom Boxes] have done what they said they would do," says Donahoe. The five boxes are able to produce five times as much electricity as the 3,248 solar panels that E-bay installed on its campus roofs, says the CEO. "The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient," he tells Stahl.
Google, FedEx, Staples and Walmart are among the first 20 clients Bloom is confirming.
Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where currently one box a day is built. The boxes create electricity by a chemical process that utilizes oxygen and fuel, but involves no combustion. Bloom's founder and CEO, K.R. Sridhar, insists all the materials in the box are cheap and available in abundance. Bloom says each large box - which can power about 100 homes - currently sells for $700-800,000. They hope within five to 10 years to roll out a smaller home version for about $3,000 a unit.
Bloom Energy was the first clean energy start-up Kleiner-Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invested in. They currently invest in about 50 clean tech companies. Sridhar confirms the company has received over $400 million, making it one of the most expensive startups in history.
John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Bloom, has high hopes. "The Bloom Box is intended to replace the [electric power] grid for its customer," says Doerr. He thinks existing utility companies should not be threatened or have a problem with Bloom Energy. "The utility companies will see this as a solution.All they need to do is buy Bloom Boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity," he says.
But there is another hurdle says Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of the Web site GreenTech Media. Even if Sridhar can mass produce his boxes and sell them cheaply enough, "The problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates that can probably do the same thing. They have fuel cell patents," he tells Stahl.
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Bloom Energy's K.R. Sridhar, holding up fuel cells that are key components of the so-called "Bloom box." (CBS)
INTERACTIVEEnergy Ed.A look at our sources of energy and how we use them to live and work.
Lesley Stahl and "60 Minutes" cameras get the first look inside the secretive California company, just days before the Bloom Energy official launch, scheduled for next Wednesday (Feb. 24).
Stahl's report will be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
John Donahoe, CEO of E-bay, confirms Bloom Boxes were installed at his corporate campus nine months ago. The company says the boxes already saved them over $100,000 in electricity bills. "It's been very successful thus far. [The Bloom Boxes] have done what they said they would do," says Donahoe. The five boxes are able to produce five times as much electricity as the 3,248 solar panels that E-bay installed on its campus roofs, says the CEO. "The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient," he tells Stahl.
Google, FedEx, Staples and Walmart are among the first 20 clients Bloom is confirming.
Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where currently one box a day is built. The boxes create electricity by a chemical process that utilizes oxygen and fuel, but involves no combustion. Bloom's founder and CEO, K.R. Sridhar, insists all the materials in the box are cheap and available in abundance. Bloom says each large box - which can power about 100 homes - currently sells for $700-800,000. They hope within five to 10 years to roll out a smaller home version for about $3,000 a unit.
Bloom Energy was the first clean energy start-up Kleiner-Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invested in. They currently invest in about 50 clean tech companies. Sridhar confirms the company has received over $400 million, making it one of the most expensive startups in history.
John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Bloom, has high hopes. "The Bloom Box is intended to replace the [electric power] grid for its customer," says Doerr. He thinks existing utility companies should not be threatened or have a problem with Bloom Energy. "The utility companies will see this as a solution.All they need to do is buy Bloom Boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity," he says.
But there is another hurdle says Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of the Web site GreenTech Media. Even if Sridhar can mass produce his boxes and sell them cheaply enough, "The problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates that can probably do the same thing. They have fuel cell patents," he tells Stahl.
Views: 328
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on -
Can you say, "Strip Mining"? Hold it, is there any sand left on Holly Beach? That wasn't trucked in.
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Permalink Reply by JeffNParis on
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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on
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It's pretty easy to turn coal into syngas, hydrogen plus carbon monoxide. Fuel cells love hydrogen. I wonder if his fuel cell can burn CO. There are also some other gasses you can synthesize from coal.
I wonder what the carbon footprint is for a Bloom box running on methane compared to other energy sources?
My impression is that the science is eminently possible. Whether it works long term, reliability, etc. will have to be determined through real world experience.
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Permalink Reply by sesport on
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Speaking of carbon footprint & energy source(s), factor into the equation the energy source(s) needed to manufacture a new technology.
80)
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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on
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Given what I saw on the show, manufacturing energy costs shouldn't be that significant vs. the energy produced, if the thing lasts a day. The amount of watts coming out of it could vaporize the whole thing in a few hours. There's a lot of watts from a small space.
Whether it balances out the dollars is another question entirely.
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Permalink Reply by Henry on
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Mac,
II think the science is there, as you say. The issue will be cost and reliability. The big breakthrough in the Bloom Box, according to 60 MInutes, was the discovery of a cheap catalyst. The Bloom Box does not use platinum or any other precious metal, supposedly. The other issue is reliability. Will the box installed in your house work every minute of every day for you? The power grid we have today is amazingly reliable. It usually only goes down in storms. And when it goes down, one crew can restore power to hundreds of people at one time. Unless this box can be made very reliable, then no one will buy it. Americans will not tolerate unpredictable power outages from an unreliable power source.
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Permalink Reply by Mac Davis on
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I think:
The big unknown is not reliability as in "how often does it break unexpectedly?"
The big unknown is lifetime as in "how long is it before it stops working?" Catalyst poisoning causes a lot of catalyst based devices to stop working after a period of time.
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Permalink Reply by Bobi Carr ("parker") on
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But the glut is the best advertisement for natural gas.
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Permalink Reply by LP on
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The Bloom Energy press conference will be noon central time. Does anyone know a way to "tune-in" to that conference?
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Permalink Reply by LP on
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I don't expect the cable news to cover it. They haven't even reported anything about it. They are too busy chewing on the bones of Toyota.
If there is nothing more than print media reporting on it, all we'll get is their bias slant on the subject.
Frustrating.
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