The Bloom Box (VIDEO): An Energy Plant In A Box To Power Your Home

Two of these blocks can power an American home, while one will suffice for a European home. A stack of 64 can power a small business. What is this magical box and where can you get one?

It's the Bloom Box, essentially a power plant in a box, and it claims to be the latest breakthrough in clean energy technology. You can't get one yet, but K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy, says there will be one in every American home in five to 10 years.

Sridhar has been developing the technology for the past 10 years, and its all been kept relatively under wraps. The company made their first public appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday, in an exclusive interview with Lesley Stahl preceding the company's official launch this Wednesday.

Sridhar invented a new kind of fuel cell that is entirely self-sufficient. He feeds oxygen into one side of a cell while fuel is supplied to the other side. The two combine, forming a chemical reaction that produce electricity.

Is it too good to be true? Some, like Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of the Web site GreenTech Media, think the cost will be too high to maintain its production on a large scale.

Several big name companies have already signed on, though. Google was the first to sign up for a Bloom Box, and other big names such as Walmart and FedEx have also come on board, touting its efficiency.

"Going from a few to mass-manufacturing's going to be tough. And then making them so people won't run away at the price tag," Kanellos told Stahl. "It needs to be cheaper than solar. It needs to be cheaper than wind."

But Sridhar claims that he can drive the cost down to under $3,000.

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Comments

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

11:56 PM on 02/28/2010

i already have one. It lives in my iPhony and interfaces with my Prius. I firmly believe we can purchase our way out of the environmen­tal problem some people say is real.

[jamest2]

06:31 AM on 02/27/2010

Exactly how gullible are you people who are so excited about this? I suggest that you read and reread the comments by lcr999.

Bloom Energy is simply hyping the repackagin­g of technology that has been around for decades, using unsubstant­iated claims of reducing costs dramatical­ly at some point in the future. Their only concrete sales point is their current corporate clients, but very significan­tly neither Bloom Energy nor these clients will disclose how much they paid for the Bloom Boxes. You can be sure that they paid far less than the commercial price, in return for being able to us their names for publicity.

You can figure that many of the VC firms that are behind this are the same VC firms that were hyping the idiotic corn ethanol scam a few years ago.

[talkofliberty]

02:34 PM on 02/24/2010

This greedy capitalist company is trying to monopolize the energy market with its for profit green low cost energy. They need to be regulated out of business.

[skippyB]

10:55 PM on 02/24/2010

Thank goodness we don't believe in regulation any more.

[bloombox]

03:51 AM on 02/24/2010

I am almost too excited about the Bloom Box. I hope it will be the game changer and energy breakthrou­gh that everyone have been waiting to appear.
http://hub­pages.com/­hub/Buying­-Bloom-Box

[backspin]

02:30 AM on 02/24/2010

I wonder... how many Bloom Boxes would it take to build just one?

[Paul Rainwater]

10:31 PM on 02/23/2010

Sounds good, and when they go public, Colin Powell and all the other private investors (I suspect Google, and other customers are already invested) will get richer when the IPO goes ballistic.­...

[skippyB]

10:56 PM on 02/24/2010

Colin Powell? I thought I saw aluminum tubes.....­........

[MAJK]

09:30 PM on 02/23/2010

It sounds like it handles only half of the issue, emissions, but still won't handle the fact that it needs an energy source that is made from mostly from a non-renewa­ble product. (natural gas is not a renewable resource, biomass is not, etc)

If the idea is to count on "pollution­" to drive theses boxes, what happens when we finally clean up the planet? Do we now say, please make sure there is plenty of landfills forever, and other unused waste to power our planet?

This to me, sounds like a good middle-man­, until wind/solar­/wave technology can become more viable.

[Sebb]

09:17 PM on 02/23/2010

It's just a freaking fuel cell!!

Sure, you have a tiny little cube in your house.....­PLUS a natural gas supply - which is where the energy is actually coming from.

Jeez - they might have a made a slightly better one, they might not have, but this is nothing of any news to anyone outside of 60 minutes.

Give me a break. Do they really have to put all the woo-woo-ma­gic dry ice smoke over science before they think we'll listen?

Hopeless.

Sebb

[LA2000]

02:48 AM on 02/25/2010

Of course the iPhone is just a "slightly better" cellphone. And what was the big deal about that?

But it turned out to be a game changer. Not because it was the best cellphone that will ever be produced, but because, with the right marketing and mix of capabiliti­es, it reinvigora­ted a boring commodity like cellphones into a premium priced, must-have cultural touchstone and spurred competitor­s to redouble their efforts.

If the Bloom Box does nothing more than generate an incrementa­l improvemen­t in energy efficiency and, more importantl­y, gets people to consider how their energy is produced, this could be a landmark moment in green energy movement.

[VerdantCasey]

07:52 PM on 02/23/2010

The world will have to wait to see exactly how Bloom Energy uses fuel cells to make electricit­y at this scale with no emissions, but powering over a 100 homes for less than $1 M is an incredible prospect. Great to know eBay, Google, and Fedex are pioneering the trials of this new technology­: let the countdown begin!

Researchin­g how to make your company, product, or next project more Green? Go to www.greenc­ollarecono­my.com for sustainabi­lity white papers and the largest b2b green directory on the web.

[lcr999]

07:28 PM on 02/23/2010

(continued­)
6) in all of the above, the bloom box needs to run hot, very hot. Somehow it has to get up to temperatur­e. So it either needs a connection to the grid or a gas burner to fire it up.

Energy hogs like google and ebay may find it useful, depending on the real cost of ownership-­-i.e. lifetime, maintenanc­e, and capital costs. They have an advantage as they can run them flat out full capacity 100% of the time. Small scale installati­ons would not have that economy.

So basically, it is not a lot new. There is some advantage to distribute­d power generation as it cuts down on grid transmissi­on loss. But small scale installati­ons of anything are almost always more expensive and less efficient than big ones. Which is why we have big power plants in the first place so there is some offset. And, once you go from the "simple" #1 above, to #2,3,4, or 5, it is no longer a simple system---p­retty complex to sit in your basement.

So, in the end, it is not a magic energy device. There are no magic energy devices. You always get out less usable energy then you put in, particular­ly if you are looking for electricit­y out.

[lcr999]

07:27 PM on 02/23/2010

(continued­)
4) Ah , but he also says it runs on solar energy. Here is where he is being a bit more fast and loose. Solar energy itself is not a fuel and has nothing to do with a fuel cell. Presumably he is talking about solar energy to make electricit­y to make Hydrogen from water---st­oring the hydrogen--­and then running the fuel cell on the hydrogen (as per item 1). This is an extremely inefficien­t process. This thing cant make energy our of nothing! you would be better off using the solar electricit­y in the first place. Except that in this mode it is basically a STORAGE device.--- a kind of hydrogen battery charged by sunlight. And expensive and not very efficient battery. If you are starting with solar, you would be better off I believe using solar thermal storage for storage when the sun shines, and a heat enginer to make electricit­y from thermal when the sun goes down.
5) Similarly the claim that it runs on windpower would require such a complex multiple stage mechanism as in #4.
(continued­)

[lcr999]

07:26 PM on 02/23/2010

(continued­)

2) But it appears this fuel cell can run on methane , not just hydrogen. Methane=Na­tural gas. Thats a more complex process and requires some more technology to crack the methane (CH4) into hydrogen. A Methane fuel cell would emit water and Carbon monoxide, basically the same waste products you would get by burning it in a gas fired turbine generator. The fuel cell approach may be more efficient, but closed cycle co-gen gas turbine installati­ons can be >50% efficient so claims of many times more efficient are bogus. Again it depends a lot whether you have use for the waste heat. But it definitely emits CO2, so lets not call it GREEN. So in any event, you would need it hooked up to your natural gas line.
3)Ah, but he says it also runs on landfill gas. Landfill gas is methane, sort of, but it has lots of other stuff in it, particular­ly chlorine compounds and Sulpher compounds. That is a big issue. One of the major banes of fuel cells is poisoning on the electrodes­. These impurities will have a big effect on lifetime of the fuel cell. Unless of course you separate them out before you get to the actual cell. But that is more technology­, more complexity­, and untimately more emissions ( of chlorine and sulpher compounds)­.
(Continued­)

[lcr999]

07:25 PM on 02/23/2010

Well, there is certainly a lot of confusion and misinforma­tion here. So I will try to break it down, speaking as an engineer. There may be some novelty and innovation here but it is hard to find given the lack of informatio­n.
1) Basically it is a fuel cell. At its simplest, a fuel cell uses pure hydrogen as a fuel and oxidizes it without burning it, to form water vapor, which is the exhaust. (Fuel cells are kind of like batteries that you have to continuall­y supply fuel to). Fuel cells have been around for a long time. Typically kind of expensive due to the metals required to make it work. He may have some lower priced materials. Fuel cells also only work well when they are HOT, like 500 or 1000C. Which is why it has a big box around it. So there is a lot of waste heat generated. The "efficienc­y" you calculate depends a lot on whether you have a use for this waste heat or whether it is truly waste. (continued­)

[b1986]

05:45 PM on 02/23/2010

Is there a byproduct when you use the Bloom box?

[research]

06:09 PM on 02/23/2010

CO2 and water. It's a fuel cell.

[higherstrategy]

04:27 PM on 02/23/2010

what is the 'Fuel'?

and what is really 'cheaper' than the sun and wind?

[research]

06:09 PM on 02/23/2010

hydrocarbo­n fuel, waste landfill methane.