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."

Comments

About $2K savings per month

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, they will pay for themselves in about 30 years.

Re:About $2K savings per month

[TubeSteak]

Cool, they will pay for themselves in about 30 years.

That's if you only account for direct energy savings.

One important cost consideration is that this can be used to suplement/replace backup generators. Backup diesel systems are big, expensive, and (ideally) sit around doing nothing except during maintanence checks. A fuel cell can be run 24/7, meaning every penny you save from buying a (smaller) diesel backup and on fuel should get counted towards your cost savings.

Add in a healthy dollop of Federal/State subsidies and installing such tech makes good business sense.

Re:Magic

[Orange Crush]

Methane fuel cells are nothing new and a certainly NOT perpetual motion machines. All that's really happening is that they're yanking off the extra electrons from the chemical reaction to generate electricity directly rather than burning the fuel and using a heat engine to harness the energy. No fuel, no energy.

What's novel about this is he thinks he can make them without the use of precious metals and other high costs that keep previous fuel cell designs from being adopted more widely.

I power my Segway from a Bloom Box!

[wsanders]

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?