Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by 221caribbean on November 17, 2010 at 2:38

Everyone should google Bloom Energy and read up if they have not yet done so or heard about these new fuel cells. Head offices at Google, Adobe, Walmart, Coca Cola and many others are using these cells and the preferred fuel seems to be NG. Something to get excited about even though it may be years down the road!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 17, 2010 at 6:39

So maybe folks with money in the NG industry (like the O&G companies) could have a vested interest in seeing this technology advance as rapidly as possible? If this stuff really really works great, and the energy conversion efficiency is good (I vaguely remember that fuel cells in general are good, but have not done any reading in a while - I just know that one of the big problems in energy transmission and storage is losses), then anybody with an interest in the use of NG would profit from these things coming online in a variety of sizes at reasonable price points...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by DJG on November 17, 2010 at 6:56

There was an interesting 60 Minutes feature on the Bloom Box back in August.

Here's a link to that feature:

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by essay on November 17, 2010 at 7:34

we had a thread on this already, i can't be arsed to dig it up but the gist was this technology is overly-hyped, and a marginal improvement over previous technology at best.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 17, 2010 at 8:47

Okay, sorry for starting additional thread. I will see if I can find the previous one. I tend to take just about everything with a handful of salt, especially when someone is trying to sell me something; I really like the idea of distributing power generation though (independent streak), and I have to wonder about potential to cut down on transmission costs as well as peak demand / brownout / blackout issues. Perhaps a quick pointer on "previous technology" that would accomplish the same thing? As I said before, I was pretty impressed by how much money they wanted for one of these things... I was thinking, perhaps naively (in fact, undoubtedly naively) that if you could get one of these thing generating electrical power, on demand, on a per-house basis, then your power distribution problem becomes one of natural gas piping, period... (and it is not generating noise in loco)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by essay on November 17, 2010 at 9:46

i found this, dated 3/28/10, roughly a month after the initial 60 minutes kick-off. it speaks strongly to the uncertain economics of the product, much less questions of efficiency, especially given the distortions that government creates meddling in energy markets with regulation and subsidies. http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/03/...

i can't argue with anything in that article, if anything has changed i'd love to know. we've really got a 60 minutes theme going right now, apparently they also did another puff piece on the bloom box in late august here http://todaynewsline.com/the-bloom-box-clean-energy-the-green-solut...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 17, 2010 at 10:20

Okay, Essay, thanks for the articles. What I got from reading them is that it is likely that politics is a bigger issue than technical viability, though tech viability is not absolutely assured. I did seem some statement about some CA companies claiming substantial energy cost-savings, which I thought interesting. I still think the thing needs to come down in price too. The arguments about "just more fuel-cell tech" don't impress me; what is important is how viable it is, in terms of efficiency and operational costs. It would be extremely interesting to get the entire cost picture on these boxes vs. the highest efficiency NG power plants, and start seeing what kind of cost points the box has to hit to be competitive. I guess I think it is still worth following.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by essay on November 17, 2010 at 15:40

i think it's fairly telling that after two rounds of varying my search terms i can't come up with any actual numbers past a month or so into the media blitz. a few searches will turn up plenty of other stuff like this.

from http://solar.calfinder.com/blog/news/bloom-box-and-solar-power-sort... (granted, a solar website)

/quote Weirdest of all to me have been the odd claims about the affordability of the Bloom Box, accompanied by claims of a three-to-five year payback in energy savings...

But the math just doesn’t work out. Just using the low end, eBay’s investment into five Boxes would total $3.5 million. Doing a little math of my own, I can figure that eBay will save roughly $133,000 in its first year of “Bloom Boxing.” Without incentives, that would work out to a payback of more than 26 years.

...So with a 50-percent discount, eBay’s initial investment would slice in half to $1.75 million, as would the system’s payback period, which reduces to 13 years. That is still way beyond claims made by eBay and Bloom Energy. Unless eBay secretly paid some low amount for testing the product and the media is misleading us (they never actually say specifically that eBay paid $800K per box), or I am somehow missing all the numbers.

... And when you factor in potential maintenance costs, especially if you expect the Box to last longer than 10 years, then the economics behind the Bloom Energy Server get even more muddled. /quote

forbes also estimates that unsubsidized capital costs alone would account for $.09/kWh, which is within a penny of the average retail electricity price for all sectors over the year ending last august, according to the eia.

http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/02/24/the-economics-of-bl...

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 17, 2010 at 16:25

Thanks again, three interesting sources of information. I am not saying at all that I know these things are going to take the world by storm. I do think the solar article is a "little" biased; what I wonder is if the thing is at all load-responsive, or if you do indeed need batteries. To me batteries have always been a Achilles Heel for solar and wind on a small scale (conversion costs, capital outlay, mess, maintenance). I think the Forbes article is more balanced and hitting a lot of the right points, and ambivalent as to the final conclusion. I have been reading "The Black Swan" as of late - basically a book about transformative events coming out of left field, essentially unpredicted. To me it seems that Shale Gas Plays are sort of a black swan event - I am sure the solar, wind, and coal guys all feel blind-sided by NG suddenly becoming so economical and plentiful. It is transformative; I don't know exactly why it is in the last 2-3 yrs that the transformation has really gotten going, or exactly when the guy that first did fracking had his insight - I am sure many, many of you all in the industry know the details though. But to me, this "Bloom Box" has some potential to be something that is complementary and plays into the overall picture - though maybe 5-10 years down the road. Or maybe not. Believe me, I am not one of the guys sticking $400 million in venture capital in the thing, but there are guys out there that are...

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by essay on November 17, 2010 at 18:32

i like the idea of shale gas being a black swan event for renewables, but with the way washington works barring at least one more landslide election to the right i think their lobby will remain effective, so one wonders which swan is for what.

coal is also currently more than capable of defending itself from natural gas, as evidenced, i think, by certain media events and political activism that seem to have been coming hot and heavy here recently. however, as an astute poster on another site puts it, big oil is buying up shale properties and the inference is it will eventually begin to counter much of coal's influence.

the achilles heel of most "green" energy industries as i see it are the subsidies required to make the financing work. how long have we been hearing that this or that technology is on the verge of a breakthrough? we're literally just throwing billions at the wall to see what sticks, and way too much of it either winds up wasted, or worse, benefiting our rivals. eventually we will have to place reason in her seat and make decisions based on what is economical right now, not at some amorphous future date.

imagine, just spending 15% of 2009 oil imports on american gas would have created thousands and thousands of jobs and consequently disbursed $45 billion into our economy. as prices and import volumes inevitably rise so does the number. i certainly hope that the bloom box is made economical so that we can use them to burn lots of gas. i think it may wind up at least occupying certain niche applications at some point.

incidentally, hydraulic fracturing has been around over a century, was first commercially employed in 1949 and by 1988 had been used over a million times. here's a timeline. http://www.energyindepth.org/in-depth/frac-in-depth/history-of-hf/

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Robert Duke on November 17, 2010 at 19:18

Hi Essay,
Thanks for the frac timeline and pointer to that website. I am really only recently spending more time thinking about this stuff in more depth; I had "oil people" in my family on my Dad's side over in East Texas (my dad paid for Texas A&M by working on rigs in the Big Thicket, and various uncles were in the O&G business), but my own career has always been involved with science and computation. Anyway, it is both an interesting and incredibly important topic.
I think that taking advantage of the natural gas we have is the only intelligent thing to do, but I also have to acknowledge bias as a mineral owner. In the meantime, we should be developing intelligent renewable alternatives for when the gas is gone, but not at the expense of natural gas and not through economically crippling artificial mechanisms. Boondoggles should be recognized for sure, and limited in scope (for me the biggest boondoggle is the whole bioethanol from corn fiasco). Anyway, good conversation. I hope the magic box works and become cheap, but in most of these things I know there is some risk and some hype.

• ▶ Reply