The Bloom Box: a power plant for the home (video)
By Thomas Ricker 
posted February 22nd 2010 1:57AM
posted February 22nd 2010 1:57AM
Those two blocks can power the average high-consumption American home -- one block can power the average European home. At least that's the claim being made by K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy, on 60 Minutes last night. The original technology comes from an oxygen generator meant for a scrapped NASA Mars program that's been converted, with the help of an estimated $400 million in private funding, into a fuel cell. Bloom's design feeds oxygen into one side of a cell while fuel (natural gas, bio gas from landfill waste, solar, etc) is supplied to the other side to provide the chemical reaction required for power. The cells themselves are inexpensive ceramic disks painted with a secret green "ink" on one side and a black "ink" on the other. The disks are separated by a cheap metal alloy, instead of more precious metals like platinum, and stacked into a cube of varying capabilities -- a stack of 64 can power a small business like Starbucks.
Now get this, skeptics: there are already several corporate customers using refrigerator-sized Bloom Boxes. The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000 and are installed at 20 customers you've already heard of including FedEx and Wal-mart -- Google was first to this green energy party, using its Bloom Boxes to power a data center for the last 18 months. Ebay has installed its boxes on the front lawn of its San Jose location. It estimates to receive almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago -- an estimate we assume doesn't factor in the millions Ebay paid for the boxes themselves. Bloom makes about one box a day at the moment and believes that within 5 to 10 years it can drive down the cost to about $3,000 to make it suitable for home use. Sounds awfully aggressive to us. Nevertheless, Bloom Energy will go public with details on Wednesday -- until then, check the 60 Minutes sneak peek after the break.
[Thanks, Abe P.]
Shit.
@Lando Calrissian took the words right out of my mouth. the future is starting to freak me out a bit.
@Lando Calrissian
You mean, shitly awesome.
@Lando Calrissian I wonder if it has anything to do with Google gaining clearance to buy and sell energy
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/19/google-gains-clearance-to-buy-and-sell-energy-continue-taking-o/
@Lando Calrissian
Shit is right.
I'm completely ignoring the fact that me and many others are exploiting this thread just to get a greater visibility.
common Engadget, implement a better system.
@Lando Calrissian
"We can use solar" fuel? How can a fuel cell take "solar" as a fluidic fuel? Are they planning to bottle sunlight and pump it in?
This is a fuel cell, much like any other, that uses cheaper materials to create it, so that's why it's good. It appears to have many of the disadvantages of normal generators, i.e. they require hydrocarbon fuels and will release C02. The main differences seem to be reduced size, reduced weight, increased efficiency, reduced noise and reduced cost of manufacture. It does not, however present a greener way of generating electricity than those already available.
@Oldarney Just figure for a moment one of those small fuelcells pit in a electric motorcycle or a car. How far will the vehical go and for how long if they can shrink it down.
The tech is very cool and can be used for many things like in many other vehicals like boats and planes. It can be used in emergencies like in hati.
If they can get it down to $3000 to power a home or any other things we can think of, then it would be worth getting.
@Lando Calrissian
thats no fridge it's a power station!!!
@mattarth What was (most likely) edited out of the story is that you could use Solar Power and electrolysis to generate Hydrogen and Oxygen... Hydrogen being the 'fuel' and Oxygen one of the imports into the system.
@Jacinth Absolutely
@Lando Calrissian
hey! I sent this story in! u better not say it's shit!
@mattarth
I was wondering this same thing... the fuel cell produces electricity from a source. Hell I can create a device that takes electricity and converts it into electricity. It's called a wire.
@mattarth
Well, if you look at its increased efficiency, it must be "greener."
No?
@Slick
True, it's greener if it releases less CO2 per KW generated than other similarly fueled generators. However as a method, it's not as green as, say, wind power.
@Lando Calrissian It can power G? Wow.. hopefully this will continue for the google ISP to spread globally. Preview: http://bit.ly/fastest-internet-connection-on-earth-future
Did he say boom box?
@Lando Calrissian
That's the maddest thing I've seen in ages, if it works it could change the course of human history, cheap clean energy for all :O
@Lando Calrissian
The name is shit... Bloom... BOX
I would call it the " iBOX"
@Lando Calrissian
OK, when I see him holding the BOX i get a flashback from the LOTR the scene were the Gollum holds the ring saying "My Precious". XD
@mattarth Huh? How is "increased efficiency" not greener? Look, if your waiting for a miracle, It ain't gonna happen. The path to energy independence will be with incremental advances like this (assuming it works of course).
@mattarth Nah, just pour in some Sunny D.
@Rasec Enron much, anyone?
@mattarth Wind power kills ridiculous amounts of birds and isn't all it's made out to be if you look at the life cycle of the thing. Here, read this article: Wind Energy's Ghosts
@jimgadgetman Darnit, no html allowed here?
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
@Lando Calrissian Amen Lando. How about one of these for my Jeep? Just axing.
@mattarth
Re-read/listen. If used in conjunction with biofuels it makes it carbon neutral; so cheaper, smaller, more efficient, and carbon neutral = greener than current options.
Also, wind is good, but this is smaller, probably cheaper, and can still be carbon neutral..
mattarth,
The production of Biochar also results in a biofuel that could be used. In that case the whole process would be much greener, most likely carbon negative.
@Chizzed Don't forget about the CO2 that it releases
@ljstevens
If you listen carefully you will hear that it was originally developed to work with CO2 and outputted oxygen. They can still use that process here on earth but CO2 is not in as much of an abundance in the air as O2 is.
So...where are we supposed to get fuels from, or rather, where are current customers getting fuel from?
@tekdemon
Gas is already coming in for your furnace isn't it? At least at my home it is. Or to heat the water. Just reroute a part to the Bloombox.
I'm quite interested by this technology. I'm not as skeptical as the guy in the video who said it would be a GE box, but I'm not entirely convinced just yet either. Hope to hear and see more on this company soon.
@tekdemon
Natural Gas is probably the easiest to get, since a large portion of American homes have Natural Gas. And it would use 50% less Natural Gas then a Natural Gas powerplant to create the same energy.
It isn't the holy grail he is making it out to be, since it does still require fuel. A holy grail would be Solar technology that is affordable and effective enough and batteries that are effective enough to store that energy when the sun isn't out. Even now though, customer studies have shown that in Rochester, NY solar panels are still ecnomical in the long term even though it would take close to a decade to break even if not more and the high initial investment of about $20K.
@LJKelley Another website that had featured this tech said that solar power would be a viable fuel for the bloom box (though maybe in the future).
@tekdemon Many homes already have natural gas installed. If not, you could always power it with farts.
@Navarr do you know what solar panels cost?
@LJKelley Uhm... Yeah, last time I checked we'd run out of Natural Gas in a couple years if we used that much.
@Quiglag lmao... flatulence never gets old
@tekdemon
Hank Hill will be very happy with this, since you can power it with propane. Just think of all the propane & propane accessories that will be needed.
@tekdemon There are a lot of industrial-class fuel cells being used now. It's a great field. But, it's just a way of getting power from methane (natural gas) from CONVENTIONAL SOURCES. It's just that at industrial sites they can save money sometimes by doing their own generation, and this is one of the more economic ways to do it at a medium (not household, not power-plant-sourcing-millions-of-houses) scale.
Basically 99.9999999999% of fuel cells in use today get their hydrocarbon from conventional sources (and when it's hydrogen instead of hydrocarbon, the hydrogen is made from hydrocarbon, from conventional sources).
That's pretty sweet.
Here's the thing. The reason this is big is because unlike wind power and solar cells and wave harvesters, systems that use fuels don't need batteries to store their energy. They are, in a since, self sufficient and contain their own form of energy storage. Need less electricity? Pump in less fuel. When you think of the United States converting to Solar and Wind Energy, you aren't just considering the cost of those systems, but also depending on elaborate battery storage or other methods and don't help out any form of portable system, in the end what you are depending on is battery technology since the electricity itself doesn't have a uniform output. Will Solar power and capacitor or battery storage be the future of clean energy? Hopefully, but we have plenty of fuel and since it is an efficient and portable source of electricity, i suggest we use it.
"solar" is not a fuel
@spin cycle solar cells create electricity, troll.
@OneOfOne : Well sure, but it's still not a fuel. This device mixes the fuel with oxygen, i.e. it burns it. How exactly do you 'burn' sunlight?
@spin cycle
I still cannot whether they particles or waves.
@spin cycle
Actually it does not burn anything. It is a chemical process separating protons and electrons. There is no combustion.
@spin cycle Seriously? I am so worried that people do not get basic electro chemistry... Use solar power to create hydrogen and oxygen with electrolysis... Carbon neutral.
@ordinaryguy
Carbon stupid. Use solar energy to create electricity to break water and then use that to create electricity? What the hell is the point? Hydrogen is an awful energy storage mechanism.
@Ken J The point is that you substitute the bank of batteries for the bloom box and some storage for the oxygen and hydrogen in order to power the site when the solar cells are not active.
@Ken J Electrolysis is horribly inefficient... however I did not state anything about using Hydrogen as a storage medium. You feed it as a fuel into this system. I am reacting to the comments about Solar Power being unusable in this system... which is false based on what is stated in this article.