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Fuel Cell Marvel "Bloom Box" Gaining Momentum
Many sources are continuing to excitedly report on the latest in a long line of startups chasing the holy grail of power sources. This incarnation, the "Bloom Box" from Bloom Energy, promises a power-plant-in-a-box that you can literally put in your backyard, and has received backing from companies like eBay, Google, Staples, FedEx, and Walmart. CBS recently aired an exclusive interview with K.R. Sridhar about his shiny new box. "So what is a Bloom Box exactly? Well, $700,000 to $800,000 will buy you a 'corporate sized' unit. Inside the box are a unique kind of fuel cell consisting of ceramic disks coated with green and black 'inks.' The inks somehow transform a stream of methane (or other hydrocarbons) and oxygen into power, when the box heats up to its operating temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius. To get a view of the cost and benefits, eBay installed 5 of the boxes nine months ago. It says it has saved $100,000 USD on energy since."
Gaining momentum.. just attach a generator and queue the duck-and-cover themesong :)
Cool, they will pay for themselves in about 30 years.
Ok, so 5 units at 800,000 is 4 million. If they save 100,000/9 months, that's 133,333/year. So it'll only take them 30 years to repay the cost, assuming that money has no time value of course. Sounds like a poor investment to me.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
K.R. Sridhar's only response when questioned how it worked was: "Who run Barter Town?"
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
So if they bought 5 of these at $800,000 then they've sunk in $4,000,000. Over 9 months they've saved $100,000 which is a total of $11,111 a month. In 30 years they'll break even?
Does anybody know if Bloom Energy eats their own dog food? Do they power their own offices, labs, and other facilities with Bloom Boxes?
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
5 * ($800,000) = $4 Million. At current energy prices, saving $100,000 every 9 months would mean they recoup their initial investment in about 30 years. I'll pass.
This sounds like just a hydrogen fuel cell. The breakthrough would be if they managed to build one without a platinum catalyst, thus lowering the price. Also, these are much more cost effective if you also capture all the waste heat and use it for heating as well as electrical generation, hence the emphasis on small private units instead of a centralized generation plant.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They give no explanation of how it works. "The inks somehow transform a stream of methane (or other hydrocarbons) and oxygen into power, when the box heats up to its operating temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius." Where have I heard claims like this before? Oh yeah from the proponents of various perpetual motion machines.
Of course, people have been turning hydrocarbons and oxygen into power at well below 1,000 degrees Celsius for a long time now. It's called a combustion engine.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A box that converts hydrocarbons to energy? What will they think of next?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What exactly powers these boxes? The details in the given article are really vague...Also if it produces waste, how is it any better than traditional power generation techniques?
I'm betting there were some hefty tax incentives at play in this decision.
It still turns gas into electricity like a powerplant, it still produces CO2 like a gas fired powerplant, the efficiency is a big question but is probably higher (direct electron transmission vs comustion) which however assumes 100% utilisation; you save the power cost of transmission but incur the cost of gas transport. In conclusion: Hm, interesting.
eBay says they installed 5 of the devices (at $700-800k each) nine months ago and have saved $100,000 since. Doing the math, each device is saving them about $27k a year, meaning that it will take right around 28 years to recoup the investment. Worse, the actual ROI on the purchase is a whopping 3.6%, and that's assuming that natural gas prices don't increase since it is still burning gas as fuel. Other than saving space, how is this better than solar panels which typically have a 15-20 year payoff period?
Ok, if the price quoted is before federal and state subsidies (California I would imagine has some pretty good clean energy grants), that might change the equations a bit. But even if the price was cut in half, the ROI would only be 7.2 percent, I thought companies like eBay and Google tended to be a bit more aggressive with their investments than that.
The fact they are in use with major corporations means it's not snake oil. The only question is cost. The first units are very expensive because they are hand built but according to the inventor they use no rare or expensive materials. If that's true then the costs will drop like a rock once they are mass produced. Fuel cells are nothing new he's just come up with a cheap cell. Most will be skeptical but this time it seems real. We aren't talking about wild claims they are in use now and even at the early adopter price the users seem very happy with them. If they can drop the price even to twice his claim they'll be a bargain.
Also I see no reason they wouldn't work for a car. The cell size would be half what a whole house unit would be and they'd be light. Just switch to LP gas and you have an electric car with an excellent range and lightweight. If the pricing is right in ten years they could cost a fraction of what a battery pack does making an LP gas electric car even cheaper than a regular car and likely with a similar range. Yes I know infrastructure but here's a shocker, I can get LP tanks at a 7/11! They are readily available now! If you have a LP gas for heat and cooking you could fill up at home!
It might save money but how is this technology greener?
To me it sounds like they're burning methane.
No sig today...
There was a piece about that on yesterday's 60 Minutes show: A Peek Inside the Bloom Box. The story is reported by Lesley Stahl, who was her usual self: "Wow! Gee Whiz! I want you to be impressed by technology, but I personally am not really interested in it."
They tried to gloss over it, but in the end it still takes in oxygen and releases CO2 while burning hydrocarbons. Sounds more like a more efficient version of current power systems than a alternative energy source.
The only upsides I can see is possible improvement in efficiency, decrease of cost, and less loss in transmission (since theoretically it's closer to whatever is using the power than a power plant). Now since they haven't actually given us any details on how these, I can't consider it a revolution.
That's not to say it wouldn't be good to buy some stock when it IPOs...just it may not be a good idea to hold it long
Not shit, ENERGY!
that's assuming that natural gas prices don't increase since it is still burning gas as fuel.
As natural gas prices go up, the price of natural gas-fired electric power will go up, so Bloom Box users save on the mark-up.
Other than saving space, how is this better than solar panels which typically have a 15-20 year payoff period?
Photovoltaic and photothermal power sources have problems at night, on cloudy days, and far from the equator.
But even if the price was cut in half, the ROI would only be 7.2 percent
For one thing, Bloom is looking at cutting the price further than half. For another, the return on investment from a Bloom Box isn't purely monetary; it's also a hedge against relative prices of different forms of power.
Why would anyone ever install the technology as a primary power source in a store or datacenter that had access to the power grid? If the technology is that good, the power companies will buy it and use it to generate the power themselves.
...is made from Energizer Bunny blood!!!
This is a neat idea... but the cost of the units is obviously prohibitive at the moment. People (generalizing) will pay a bit more for guaranteed clean energy, especially if at some point it has little or no ongoing cost. But they won't pay for something that has a 30 year break even unless the devices last that long without any significant maintenance (added cost).
If mass production brought the costs down, I could see this being an interesting alternative for folks not well served (in one way or another, including cost) by existing power utilities. Provided of course the machine with its "secret" components doesn't create other problems, like being non recyclable, or being hazardous in some other way.
This is more revolutionary for the third world though.. any country without an existing power infrastructure or with a less than robust one could install a lower cost version of this unit at a lower price than creating a country wide power distribution network. We may see a time in the near future where the third world countries are running off of these sorts of micro power plants while the US still gets its energy centrally, from big expensive power plants.
Green is good, but people won't do it unless it's cheap too. We're kinda dumb that way.
I'll be in line when it can fit on my shoulder, and I can dance in my plaid bellbottoms and funky shades
It's a fuel cell. You can see vid at 60min website.
An analyst said GE will overtake them.
Okay okay... so this is a 'green' technology. The 60 minutes report I saw had it cutting one source of fuel for one entity (some campus and using natural gas) down by 50%. That, in itself is great.... but wait. Oxygen and 'fuel' are used. I realize that concern about too much CO2 in the air is one thing, but there is also the issue of too little O2 in the air. It is not a life-threatening issue yet, but could potentially be with all the combustion of fuels, declining forests and, now, these miracle machines. How much O2 do they consume? What'll happen when there's pentillions of them doing their thing all around the world? A lot of the consequences of industrialism were not immediately foreseen... but this time around, this one makes me wonder.
Sounds like this converts Natural Gas into electricity, what a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of our electrical power comes from Natural Gas being burned in motors that TURN generators. They are either Turbines or conventional large internal combustion engines that turn those generators, the conventional way of turning chemical energy into electrical energy is very poor and a lot of energy is wasted as heat energy. Sounds like these Boxes or "Heat Catalyzing Fuel Cells" could be far more efficient and if can be scaled up could be used to stretch the fossil fuel buck a whole lot more and easily be scaled to bio fuels.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If they wanted to use this in a more environmentally friendly way, perhaps they could run biogas through the devices. Upgrade the sewage system and make energy at the same time! :)
I've been watching another company for a while, waiting for them to offer their fuel cells here. http://www.cfcl.com.au/
I worked on a machine that was part of the production of the ceramic layers for a very similar process, in this case, extracting certain gasses from atmospheric air. If this is the same technology, the ceramic, at least in the stage we processed it, looked like a refrigerator magnet, it's suspended in some kind of polymer. That was years ago, and they were talking about the technology possibly leading up to something like this. If the technology ever reached the point where they could extract the two fuel components (hopefully with some sort of renewable power source) this would be very promising tech for on-location power generation.
Excellent! Mine will be self-powered.
Just as soon as someone invents a perpetual motion machine, I'm going to invent a time machine, so I can go back in time and steal that perpetual motion machine!
-kgj
It takes in hydrocarbons and oxygen and puts out energy? Am I a skeptic for thinking that this thing must be releasing lots of CO2? I cannot find any description of how it works. I have no doubt that it produces energy, but if it is producing gaseous CO2, it won't really help with the fundamental problem.
Out of that $700,000 how much does it cost to manufacture? How much is the markup? Most of these magic snake oil things have a huge percentage of the price going to the patent holder. Lets say it costs $100,000 to make and the other $600K is going to Mr Snake. How is that good for anyone?
If it is REAL, maybe we "the government" should use eminent domain and make the technology available for everyone. Why let the greed of Mr Snake hinder us all?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Here is a quote from the EETimes article. "The resultant Bloom Boxes are not inexpensive today— about $750,000 for a unit capable of running a household (about four to six units are needed to run a typical data center). But within five to 10 years the company promises to reduce the price to as little as $3,000" These fuel cell are not being mass produced yet. Please read about fuel cells before making any judgments about the technology. http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/online/news http://www.fuelcells.org/news/updates.html There are many other companies working on similar fuell cells for homes and vehicles that have already been in use for several years.
... Information. Please help clarify and improved this article by adding references.
Anyone else picture this when reading the summary?
"Many sources" "Excitedly report" "Exclusive interview" "eBay. Google. Staples. FedEx. Walmart. CBS."
All marketing hoopla.
Is it small enough to strap on a shark and power the laser?
Green and black inks, so it's coated with that $800k in singles? Close the damper and I'm sure they and the methane will burn for a really long time. Also, I'm not sure I want something running at 1,000 C in my back yard, though I'd be popular for cookouts.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
5 boxes saved 100,000 in 9 months, that's 133,000/year saved for 5 boxes. Per box that's 26,600/year. At 700,000 bucks per box, it would take ~26.3 years for it to pay for itself. That's a loooooong time to see ROI, and in the meantime, don't you think other, better methods would be developed?
They did rate BloomBox as "A+++++++++ Would buy from again!"
The issue isn't that it works, it's the volumetric efficiency of the storage. LP is nowhere near gasoline, and is very expensive. These are likely worthwhile because they convert natural gas (which costs about 1/3 to 1/2 LP, delivered, on a MMBTU basis).
It may be slightly better for the environment since it's burning^wconverting more H per C than gasoline, but it's still hydrocarbon based.
If I had to guess, this gives these players a stable, off-grid (aka backup) power source as backup while being cost competitive with local electrical rates. It sure as hell beats having to maintain diesel generators.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
See the wiki entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOFC
The "inks" are probably catalysts that make the cell work better or at a lower temperature. My guess is that the inks help crack the hydrocarbon fuel.
Solid oxide fuel cells are a bit like the low temperature hydrogen PEM cells. Two chemical reagents on opposite sides of a membrane really want to come together. That potential is harvested by a conductors. High temperature fuel cells, like SOFCs, can use hydrocarbon fuels because they can crack the carbon chain on the membrane surface and use the resulting hydrogen (and elemental carbon) to react with oxygen.
Cubert: Your explanations are pure weapons grade balognium. It's all impossible. Professor Farnsworth: Nothing is impossible. Not if you can imagine it. That's what being a scientist is all about. Cubert: No, that's what being a magical elf is all about.
I would gladly pay 3k to power my home and help reduce CO2 emissions. I realize there is also the cost of fuel but that can be bio fuel among others. In addition, the fuels are not being combusted.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
ROI is a misleading concept. You can't just figure ROI based on your PG&E bill over 30 years time. With traditional energy production methods costs have historically been subsidized and not even fully account for ecologic damage. Energy production costs do not include costs associated with recovering from previous CO2 emissions. What will the full cost be? It will have to include costs associated with cleanup from radioactive waste treatment, land, homes, and other associated economic losses due to rising sea levels, and so on. Cost of energy as it currently is produced will prove to be incredibly expensive. 1) Natural gas is the most abundant and clean burning hydrocarbon on the planet. 2) It is clean burning, meaning it will not release as any waste hydrocarbons or as much CO2 into the atmosphere. ergo "green" 3) It is a new technology. As demand rises, costs will come down. My gut is telling me that true ROI all things considered would be 5-10 years, not 30.
1000 degrees Celsius! That is hot, dam hot.
OK not enough to melt steel or aluminum, but still freaking hot.
There's a decent market for low-pollution electricity generators for cells and transmission towers in the small archipelagos to serve small villages.
this has scam written all over it.
However. As backup generators they might be useful.
In essence, a company can buy a mini-power station. These units produce power no more efficiently, no more "greenly", and really no better than their full scale counterparts. If the benefit is anything other than independence from the power grid, I fail to see the point.
If these units are indeed cheaper in the long run than buying power (which I highly doubt), then it'd be worthwhile for the power companies to investigate what they are doing wrong before more competition starts spring up all over the place.
How is this product different from other ceramic fuel cell units that have been used in the UK and Europe for years now?
eg http://www.cfcl.com.au/
Yes, me too... IF (big if) he can hit his 3k/home cost target.
Right now a single unit is $700k-$800k. How many would he have to build to reduce the price that much? Hundreds of thousands?
Taking nearly 30 years to break even.
Need to have it break even in 8 or less years, with a warranty at least twice as long, and an expected life of 3 times.
But something like this could be in use of water treatment plants, and factories that just burn off excess gases.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I see much lower cost productions units like this being deployed in many places.
1) At Lanfills sites. They produce a lot of Methane which is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2
2) At Dairy Farms. Cow dung is also a great Methane producer. The costs of transporting it to a central site would be prohibitive but one tailored to the dung output of a farm would produce more than enough electricity to power the farm. The farmer would go int othe power generation biz producing milk as a by product.
Something similar covered by slashdot almost 10 years ago, tech didn't go anywhere then either.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/00/09/18/0047202/Get-Off-The-Grid-GE-Announces-Home-Fuel-Cells
"the "Bloom Box" from Bloom Energy, promises a power-plant-in-a-box that you can literally put in your backyard"
"the box heats up to its operating temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius"
Why put it outside? Put it inside and you can save money on heating bills as well.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
Interesting timing, since now they have the go ahead to do so...
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
I fail to see much appeal to these devices as regular sources of electricity; you still need hydrocarbon delivery (natural gas), you still give off CO2. It would make much more sense to do all the nasty hydrocarbon-to-electricty bits at a central location and use the grid to get the power to people. The grid is an abstraction layer; you don't have to care how the power is generated, you just end up with the results. The power plants themselves gain on economies of scale and can swap out their infrastructure gradually for future better technologies without the end user having to care. If these fuel cells are so great, they could be crammed into plants and put on the grid.
I do, however, see one very attractive use case: emergency power generation. Assuming your natural gas lines aren't interrupted (or you store your own NG supply on site), if you have one of these things around, you have backup power when the grid "goes away." This only makes sense if the price point gets low enough, of course.
Methane, O2, 1000 degrees Celcius plus electricity - perfect recipe for a disaster.
But where do they get the natural gas? This is basically a generator that runs on natural gas, albeit somewhat more efficiently. Small pacific islands would be better served by low-cost solar power.
if can be scaled up
The benefit is not in scaling up, but in scaling down.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Sounds like snake oil to me. Hype up a mysterious technology, get investors, bail...
I've seen no claims that it "could be far more efficient" than natural gas power plants. Current combined cycle natural gas power plants (turbine and steam heat recovery) get near 60%. Meanwhile, fuel cells, along with consumer grade natural gas power units are around 30% efficient in practice. I've heard no specific claims of their efficiency, but I don't imagine that it's over 60%. While it would be a great improvement on home fired units, it's by no means revolutionary. In fact, the complete lack of data they showed is a huge red flag, and I won't even be trusting their claims until they are independently verified.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
the fuels are not being combusted
This is a disingenuous claim. The efficiency is higher, but the result is basically the same as 'combustion'.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The Bloombox is mostly likely a Capital expenditure, buying electricity is an Operational Expenditure. Different tax rules/etc. that can make the CapEx pay for itself a whole lot quicker. As usual business financing is a lot more subtle than just "does A cost more than B?".
So assuming the maximum cost -- $4M USD -- the investment on a Bloom Box would appear to take 30 years to recoup.
According to the representative of the company itself (so read sales-pitch), current funding and R&D rates are expected to drop the cost of the boxes significantly over the next few years:
Mr. Sridhar hopes the funding that's being virtually thrown at him and his enigmatic box will help drive down costs to below $3,000 for a residential unit within 5 to 10 years.
In fact, if you take time to read the whole article, which is a grand total of a whopping 12 short paragraphs, the entire thing reads like a, 'help the consumer make a decision,' cost analysis. That is to say, the article references the cost of solar panel installations currently (both by ebay and at a residential level).
EBay says the five boxes generate more clean energy than the company's 3,000 solar panels (assuming a bulk cost of $200/panel, and additional expense that system would run around $1M USD, at a minimum).
...
Such costs could certainly make the technology competitive with solar systems which cost anywhere from $20,000-$70,000 USD for home installations.
That said, I won't comment on the joy that we nerds take in performing our own simple math calculations to verify and or, 'discover,' various assertions made by a techie article. Nonetheless (all you must be ... jokes aside) the article was a pretty quick and simple read that discusses in a fairly competent manner whether or not the Bloom Box is hype or not. The final conclusion it draws, however, is terribly unhelpful:
So is the "magic" box a stud or a dud? It's hard to tell. About the only thing that's for sure is that Wednesday's announcement should be intriguing.
So really, the apparent intent for the article, is that this is a press release being used to garner attention for an even more important press release to come in two days.
Cheers.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
No no no.
The S.C.A.M. you see written all over it is the label written on the
super-conducting aspiration modulator, a key component of the device.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The real question is how efficient are these fuel cells, and how much do they cost per year to maintain? If they are 70% or more efficient they beat combined cycle generators, and fuel cells typically achieve this. As long as they don't need to be replaced very often and the membranes are cheap to replace, this will work well. You could combine this with an high-temperature electrolysis plant and use it to store wind or solar power. That is one of the main things standing in the way of using alternative energy for base-load electric generation.
I would gladly pay 3k to power my home and help reduce CO2 emissions. I realize there is also the cost of fuel but that can be bio fuel among others. In addition, the fuels are not being combusted.
This only works if the CO2 emissions it creates are less than the alternatives. This seems to be more "green" in that it takes up less space than some alternatives and might require less environmentally harmful/rare materials. If you mean it doesn't "combust" fuels because it doesn't light them on fire, you still need to realize that it takes a hydrocarbon and oxygen, and exhausts CO2. This might be a major breakthrough in efficiency and fuel cell design, but it doesn't seem to be "alternative" or "zero-emmissions".
In that they had to dumb it down for the dummies. "This is silicon- sand- like you would find on any beach in the world!" Leslie Stahl: "Really? Sand? You're kidding!"
This interested me enough to actually register (finally). There is a bunch of really horrendous media coverage on Fuel Cells in general but it doesn't help that in the article they mix concepts from different types of fuel cells, different types of "green energy" and general marketing.
Fuel cells that chemically transform reactants via an electrochemical reaction to products and release bunch electric energy directly along the way. You can think of it just like a battery that you keep putting more chemicals into. All fuel cells transform hydrogen and other hydrocarbons into electric energy with a little heat, all of them, they're solid state energy conversion devices not magical boxes. The big thing about solid oxide fuel cells is that they run at ridiculously high temps (600-1000C) so their reaction kinetics are tremendously faster than other kinds of fuel cells, they can self reform various fuels (natural gas, diesel, JP8, and they are tolerant to most containments (except usually sulfur and chromium).
However, the high temperature comes with a price, their interconnects degrade extraordinarily fast, sealing is a problem because of huge thermal expansion mismatches, and finally at 1000 degrees materials stability is a big problem.
As far as what they mentioned in the article, the "inks" are just catalyst layers, every fuel cell manufacturer and university uses those, everyone has their secret sauce. The "beach" is probably YSZ, or yttrium stabilized zirconia, which is the standard. The metal interconnects are coated with some conductive interconnects, no one would think of using platinum interconnects, they use that for catalysts on PEM fuel cells, it's totally unneccesary for SOFCS.
And if you're wondering, I'm doing graduate work on SOFCs, so we see this marketed crap in our field all the time, hopefully Bloom Energy has solved some of those problems I mentioned.
Other companies to check out: CFCL, Ceres Power
True, but at least it is twice as efficient (apparently) as using the same fuels to produce power at a traditional power plant. Of course, as others have pointed out, there are also losses in the transmission of power from traditional plants.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
I only need :D
- a igniter
- a turbine
- a generator
Done.
Put it all in a box, and let’s say it’s... a... “fuel cell”. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
If you assume the natural gas comes from fossil sources, this isn't very green.
If it is powered from the gas from an Anaerobic Digester, it becomes a carbon neutral energy source. Very green.
Cleaner than Coal. Can be used in mobile applications (i.e. semi's, cars, etc) if you ignore the costs. In a home/business, the heat can be used to heat AND cool the home.
However, the first thought is, how long does it last? If it never dies, and a home version cost 50K or less, then it is VERY useful. OTH, if it dies every 10 years (or more likely in 6 months ), then it is a rip-off at just about any price.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm no expert but from what I have seen in dealing with (manufacturer of parts for) similar fuel cell technology that also uses methane is that they struggle to reach even 50% efficiency from parts used of methane. 40% is the norm. Most times the only reason a company is using it is because of subsidies that the government gives them from using such a "green" technology. So maybe if you include government handouts it might be cost effective at some of the outlandish prices I have seen on these units.
This guy is going to be big news one way or another:
Either a revolutionary or a total fraud.
Some odd indications:
natural gas, biogas, ...
Stahl: "solar?"
Sridhar: "solar" (solar gas?)
The Bloom box show very minimal heat dissipation accommodations, and I have serious doubts that it's running at 100% efficiency.
Does NASA have any claims in case this is kosher?
They _really_ oughta put these things on every landfill and use the methane from decomposition for fuel.
Especially good for parks built on a decommissioned landfill. Now you got cheap electricity for the park that only gets
cheaper as time goes on.
Nothing new under the sun...move along...
http://www.cfcl.com.au/
nuff said.
Lets look at what this IS and what it ISN'T.
This is an ENERGY CONVERSION technology. It seems as though it takes an arbitrary hydrocarbon fuel and then converts the energy stored in the fuel into electricity. So, we can immediately see that comparing it to solar cells is not really comparing apples to apples. Solar cells also convert the energy in a fuel into electricity. However, in the case of solar cells, the fuel is sunlight. Sunlight is free and renewable. The same cannot be said for Hydrocarbons. Solar cells tap a renewable energy source. Bloom Boxes do not. Also, solar cells produce no biproducts whereas the Bloom Box produces carbon dioxide. If you buy into the culture of global warming and "carbon is evil" then this is a bad thing. Personally I find the science to be suspect. In any case, this technology is not "clean".
So far, we still need hydrocarbons. Now we're going to need enough to generate everyone's electricity too. No matter how much shale gas they say is out there, I'm not too comfortable with this idea. This does not solve our energy problems. It does not address the big issue around finding a NEW source of cheap FUEL. This provides a new way of consuming the fuel we already use. It would increase our dependence on hydrocarbons.
But, lets not burn down the factory yet. It could still be a very important technology although it is not a game changer.
So, why would we care about this technology? In fact, we already have machines that do exactly the same thing - gas turbines. Presumably this is very EFFICIENT energy conversion process. The only reference to efficiency that I can find is in the 60 minutes piece in which they say that the Bloom Box requires about 1/2 the natural gas required by a power plant to produce the same amount of electricity. If this is true, this unit has our best gas turbines beat by 100%. That would be impressive. If we can get similar efficiency out of a household size unit that would be even more impressive, although unlikely. I'm sure somebody with a better background in thermodynamics can comment on that. I'll bet that some of the savings stem from the fact that transmission line losses are avoided. Nice idea. I imagine that pumping natural gas is a more energy efficient way of transporting energy (Does anybody have any numbers on that?
As for the money, never mind the 30 year payback period. Those numbers don't mean much. Right now they are hand building these in a factory that produces one a day...sounds a lot like a Rolls Royce to me. If they were cranking them out like Chevys, the math would be a lot different. The CEO wants to sell you one for $3000.00 for your home. And you'll save...what exactly? We don't know. If you could save 1/2 your electricity bill, the whole thing might make sense. That is, if natural gas prices don't double again in the next 15 minutes. We just don't have enough information yet. Persoanlly, I don;t like having to buy hydrocarbons for my car and my heat. The price swings too wildly. You just don;t know what it will cost next year.
If you're a pig farmer, or someone else with a lot of excess methane around, this could be good.
Otherwise, it may be an important advancement in fuel cell technology and will find many uses. It simply will not be "the" mainstream technology for generating electricity. The CEO's dream of putting one of these in every house...is exactly that...IMHO
Even if he can make these things cheep, and available all over the world, we'll push the price of natural gas up, and any other fuel source. But this does look like a good addition to the line-up of technologies that we'll be reliant on for the next 40 years to meet our desired carbon footprint goals.
-------
Look at the initial client list: eBay, Google, Staples, FedEx, and Walmart. Clearly a bunch of looser companies with no technical expertise who can easily be taken in by a smooth talker who is selling a fake product that will never deliver. (Sarcasm.)
The inventor: "Mr. Sridhar originally invented a similar device when he was working for NASA designing infrastructure for a prospective Mars colony". I know you all have an irrational hatred of NASA, but they do send spacecraft all over the solar system and help keep the ISS manned and in orbit. So it is at least possible that Mr. Sridhar is a smart guy who has done something interesting.
The technology: "The discs are produced from baked sand and then painted on each side with the special ink. In between the discs an inexpensive metal (not platinum) is placed." So just maybe he has figured out how to reduce costs by using materials less expensive then semiconductor grade silicon an precious metals. This obviously leads to the Slashdot consensus that he is wrong.
Current cost vs. long term cost: "Mr. Sridhar hopes the funding that's being virtually thrown at him and his enigmatic box will help drive down costs to below $3,000 for a residential unit within 5 to 10 years." The current "useless" price of $800,000 for an industrial unit means he has failed, and his projection of better prices in the future with mass production and further development is unfounded. Clearly decreasing prices of newly introduced technology never occur, according to Slashdot Pundits .
Yep, the Slashdot Pundits are 100% right in trash talking this effort. The could do something much better themselves, but they are all far to busy doing the impotant business of living in their parents basements, playing WoW and posting on Slashdot.
Why is Snark Required?
Well I didn't read TFA, but I read some articles about this before. Seems like this originated from a device to make oxygen on foreign planets, which means that they where probably splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. So what sounds interesting to me would be to run two devices coupled together, where one would produce hydrogen from wind/solar when available, and the other then burn hydrogen and/or FOSSIL_FUEL_FLAVOUR_OF_THE_DAY if hydrogen supply is not enough.
In fact, this could be seen as even worse for the environment than the current process. Seeing as we /are/ going to run out of oil/gas at some point, having a more efficient way of using them just increases the time before this occurs. The idea that these devices are more environmentally friendly is a false one, as they will have the same eventual net impact (having used the same amount of methane as would have been anyway). However, I'm sure that this incorrect idea is the impression the public will get, both from marketing and wishful thinking. This could lead to delayed development of genuinely green power sources as the public are fooled into thinking that they are no longer necessary, causing more damage in the long term.
nope, not far more efficient. Mildly better in theory, worse in practice. Since they are distributed they should be using the waste heat, but evidently from the 60 min story they are not.
How is it an "Investigative Journalism" show like 60 minutes will accept the explanation that the special ink painted over ceramic tiles makes energy? Presumably these guys have filed patents so why the utter lack of details? Also, why should people get excited about a power generation method that requires a fossil fuel as an input? How is this green energy?
Oxidation of any hydrocarbon is an electrochemical reaction - an exchange of electrons between fuel and oxidizer. In an "ordinary" oxidation reaction, the electron exchange is completely internal, and the only product is heat. That heat is converted to electric power through a series of mechanical means, e.g., heating water to steam, using the expansion of stem to push a turbine, using the turbine in a magnetic field to create electricity. It wastes a lot of the energy of the original oxidation reaction. In a solid oxide fuel cell, the electron exchange is captured through an external circuit, making it significantly more efficient as a generator of electricity. This is why, for example, Google reports using half of the natural gas for the same electrical output.
Ok, the methane fuel cell has been around for about 3 decades.
That's not the hard part. The materials are rather expensive. And, at $700,000+ per unit, it seems our beloved startup hasn't solved the material expense problem either.
It is articles like these which make me wary of investing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H throwing money into my 401k. The fact that a good number of investors can be bamboozled by the likes of these does not inspire confidence, to say the least.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
It's not about paying for itself, it's about eating your own dog food. Bloom Energy, Google, Yahoo, Segway, all financed from the same cabal of VCs, and the way you score revenue in that business is to trade each other your stuff and then count the trades as revenue in both directions. Kind of like two real estate guys selling each other the same two condos, until the price is bid up to a level worthy for sale to some suck^H^H^H^H other investor. Hey, it worked in 1999, why not now?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Also (besides the approx 50% effective discount from tax credits, etc) the Bay Area grid is tapped out, full, at capacity. There are colos that are only using 50% of their floor area because they cannot get enough electricity to power any more cabinets.
When fuel cell technology takes off in Texas or eastern Oregon or Nevada, then I'll be convinced.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
so let me get this straight, this amazing new generator takes in gas and burns it. it's that called a fucking combustion engine?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The problem you have here is price, third world islands cant afford 700K USD (yes, once mass production starts prices will come down and so forth but when, I have as much faith in the "market" as I do in the Easter Bunny). What these places need is a low fuel consuming generator (I'm being non-specific about the fuel), the biggest cost with maintaining diesel generators is that you have to ship relatively copious amounts of diesel there and most of these places don't have deep water ports so it has to be delivered by a small boat (maybe 20 barrels per boat, if it's not carrying anything else).
Levels of power generation do not matter, consumption is not that high. There are literally hundreds of inhabited islands without regular electricity in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philipines due to the cost of importing fuel for generators. Wind would be almost ideal for many of these places. The problem is always the initial costs, even maintenance costs are tiny in comparison.
Now for mining operations, this is good if output levels are high enough. I've been to operations in Mongolia and Tanzania where power generation is extremely costly due to the cost of shipping fuel there. If a corporate building in a city can save US$133,000 a year a remote mining operation can save 2-5 times as much.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In addition, the fuels are not being combusted.
What difference does that make? Combustion of fuel = heat + CO2 + NOx. Catalytic conversion of fuel = heat + CO2 + NOx only slightly more efficiently.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
And whatever we brand to be green IS green. Until recently green was associated with a different type of social lubricant. And therein lies the answer to the motive for calling this "Green."
Stupidity is its own reward.
People have captured and burned methane from enclosed cow barns and powered their farm plus extra but obviously burning it isn't the best idea (although I have no idea what this box does). If you put one of these in a cow farm though, you'll probably have enough methane to power some serious stuff without having to build a compost heap under it. The compost heap is basically inside the cow's stomach and all the methane is currently heading up into the atmosphere doing 1000x more damage per molecule as CO2 so we might as well turn it into semi-cleaner power. I bet it'd put out more than all those cows running on cow sized hampster wheels even...hey, that's another good idea! Install em both! lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Ignoring the problems people are pointing out about your assumptions around bond return rates and inflation, If you just put the money in the bank and count up interest, you aren't buying power which is the whole reason for the exercise. So in addition to the erosion of your investment returns from inflation, you also are paying out some sum to buy the energy you need, further eroding your investment stake. Also, any good corporate tax accountant will depreciate the hell out of the bloom boxes on taxes, so I am not sure that your suggestion is quite a good as it sounds.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Thermal engines are limited by Carnot efficiency. Fuel cells don't require a thermal step (operational temp is not the same thing), and so are not limited by Carnot cycle efficiency. Certain types of fuel cells may have other efficiency limits, but as a class they aren't limited except by the second law of thermodynamics.
just what i want in my back yard - a machine running at 1000 degrees C.
the only question is - does it come with a set of bbq tools and a removable hot plate for easy cleaning?
You are looking at the cost of the test systems.
He's saying that a 1 kw unit will cost $3,000, last 30 years, and be twice as efficient as a conventional gas generator (so around 80%). That means he expects it to produce 260,000 kWh of electricity in it's lifetime, while consuming about 30,000 cubic meters of natural gas. If you assume that natural gas will cost about 50 cents per cubic meter, while electricity will cost 12 cents per kWh, you get about $15,000 operating cost for this system ($18,000 including the cost of the unit itself), while simply buying the electricity off the grid would cost you about $30,000.
Even if the units end up costing $15,000 for a 1kW unit, it will be cost competitive with grid power!
So yeah, this system is cost competitive with grid power. Impossible you say? No, because it is twice as efficient at converting chemical energy into electrical power! The high initial costs are balanced by the phenomenal energy efficiency, and the long proposed lifespan of the units.
I was in a sports bar for the Super Bowl and when my check came, in addition to the price, it had the amounts of tips for 15% and 20%. (It may also have 30% but I'm not sure now.) I was once a waiter and I also appreciated that it was considerate to the staff who would be considered rude if they offered the same information unbidden. I thought including it in the printout of the check was a polite way of letting the customer know what reasonable gratuities were expected. That experience, combined with another recent dining experience, where the menu included a bare integer beside the dish, has made me think.
Consider if the displayed price of every dish included the tip in bold with a clear note at the top saying something like "Our prices include a minimal gratuity since we expect our staff to provide a level of service to earn it. In the event that they do not, please let a manager know and we will gladly deduct it from your bill and work to improve." The bill should also obviously state "A gratuity is already included in your bill. If the service or quality of food has exceeded or failed to meet your expectations, please let us know so that we may adjust your bill and reward or train our staff accordingly."
My suspicion is that people who under-tip would be less inclined to skimp if they felt they needed to justify their actions, and people who are delighted with their service would be glad to be invited to praise the experience with management. The average experience should be good enough that it warrants a tip but I think that the average tip would be higher if the expectation was clearly stated.
Tips are really based on the idea of pairing marketing with feedback. Since the price of dining doesn't require disclosing the cost of including a tip, marketing dictates displaying the most attractive price. Since deciding on a tip provides the customer with a feeling of control, it is seen as a way of making the customer, to some degree, the boss. My work in IT leads me to believe that people don't like the "deciding" part and prefer to be given clear instructions to do things one way. Since I believe most diners already know that the tip is expected, I believe that marketing it upfront would provide them with a sense of dealing with a company that goes out of its way to be upfront and honest with them.
I do see one drawback to the scenario: Tips are commonly under-reported as wages. Reporting tips earned under the actual amount received causes less deduction for taxes from the paycheck of servers. As a server, I was unusual in trying to report my tips as accurately as possible. My logic was that higher reported income would increase my credit in the long term and that balanced my natural greed to take all the income I could. A strong sense of ethics also played a role for me, but I believe the logic alone should provide a desire to accurately report income as enlightened self interest.
If you're in a position to implement something like this, and I hope some readers will be, then I recommend the following implementation process:
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Travel trailers (and some remote sites where grid power is not practical) tend to have several appliances powered by propane being burned to produce heat: Refrigerator, furnace, and water heater are typical.
But they have a real problem coming up with electrical power - to control these appliances and for other loads - lighting, electronics, etc. They resort to deep-cycle lead-acid batteries (charged from line power or the vehicle when being towed) or a propane-powered engine with a generator. For considerably more bux they can have solar panels and charge controllers mounted to run them on extended stays at remote sites - IF they're sunny.
Seems to me that replacing the burner in one or more of these appliances with a small model of one of these devices and using the waste heat for the original heating job could provide plenty of charging power "for free". The fuel's energy still ends up mostly as waste heat which isn't "waste" for the original appliance. The fuel burns hotter an the fuel cell uses the drop across the first several hundred degrees to make juice, after which the appliance (which didn't need the heat at such a high temperature) uses the rest. The fuel consumption would be only slightly more than the original appliance, rather than the much greater consumption of the appliance plus a separate generator.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Tokyo Gas has been putting in natural gas fuelcell/waterheater hybrids in the tokyo area for the last year or so. They clearly are recouping some energy by doing water heating (japan typically has on-demand style natural gas water heaters). They must have overcome some of the mechanical stability and ceramic brittleness issues, since japan is earthquake prone. These are home residential units in volume production now, and probably getting a sweet subsidy from the government. What makes these jokers think they can beat someone earlier to market? If they are after the big boys like GE in making datacenter multimegawatts installations, they can think again. I say they should go for broke and set their sights on being a topping cycle combustor for a microturbine generator manufacturer like Capstone. Direct electric production via fuelcell, indirect via microturbine running off of fuel rich fuelcell exhaust, and low grade thermal recovery for water heating.
I wrote my check for my Energy Bill to Edison of Southern California. In the memo part of the check I wrote, "I Support Bloom Boxes. :-P"
The yeast aren't dead. They are just sleeping. Dreaming of simple sugars. If you don't believe me, boil up three pounds of sugar in a gallon of water, cool it below 27c or so and pour it back in the jug, and add the sediment from a bottle conditioned ale. The dreamer *will* awaken.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I think if you look into it you'll find the companies purchasing these are probably replacing backup generators which have very high maintenance costs. High enough to cover the early adopter premium.
5 Boxes cost $4,000,000 and returned $100,000 in five months which means it takes 16.67 years to cover the cost of your investment. I think the boxes need to get a little cheaper before they will become economically feasible.
"Sounds like these Boxes or "Heat Catalyzing Fuel Cells" could be far more efficient and if can be scaled up could be used to stretch the fossil fuel buck a whole lot more and easily be scaled to bio fuels."
One thing I think some have forgotten is that fuel cells fit well into a redundant and fault-tolerant electric system. How easy is it to knock out one power plant and how many get affected? How about a bunch of fuel-cells scattered throughout the countryside?
It's still running
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/fuelcells/seca/index.html#news
Maybe someone can help me with these questions.
"...when the box heats up to its operating temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius."
1. How do you heat the box up to 1000 degrees? Is it sold in a self-heating unit or do I need to find a big oven? (I'm assuming it's self heating.)
2. If the unit doesn't work until it reaches 1000 degrees, where does it get the power to heat itself? Drawn from the electrical grid? Chemical warmers?
Other posters mentioned the tax incentives of using this (or another) fuel cell.
3. What happens when the tax incentives stop? My only experience with tax incentives is a program to stimulate ownership of downtown real estate. Once the tax incentive period is up, people move to the 'burbs. So if the tax incentive for this technology is cut, what would happen? (That's really general, I know, so feel free to skip answering this one.)
"The inks somehow transform a stream of methane (or other hydrocarbons) and oxygen into power."
4. So if I have a septic system I could have my own infinite supply of power?
5. Since every up has a down and every left has a right, I assume that I could pump power into one end of this thing and get methane and oxygen out of it so I have plenty of breathable air in my spaceship. (And methane, which I could maybe use to power a generator, or store and use to create a greenhouse effect on Mars.)
I would love to have one of these hydrocarbon fuel cells when the price gets down around $5000 per home. I could pull up to the TV with a big bowl of beans and watch Lucy in a create a carbon-neutral state!
That guy is not an analyst, just a guy with a blog who was ecstatic to be on 60 minutes.