Bloom Energy

Very cool tech. If it plays out, it would make an excellent range-extender: small form factor, solid-state, quick refill infrastructure (nat gas), none of the auxilary systems of an ICE engine (starter, oil, transmission/generator, etc )

//dan.

If, as they claim, it will be about ten years before they can reduce the size and cost to power residential homes, then I wouldn't look for an automotive application for at least a decade. Plus, the Bloom Box is designed for stationary applications. I doubt that the complexities of abusive mobile applications are on their radar right now.

If it's real, and it appears it is, I'd like to see local sewage treatment plants and landfills investing in this kind of technology to sell power back into the grid. Landfills already do this, but if the claims are correct landfills could probably double their output by replacing aging turbines.

Yeah, they can run off the sun!

doug said:

The claims are rather intriguing: Twice as efficient as grid transmitted power generated from natural gas. Two small cubes with enough power output for an American household, etc.

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I once estimated the average efficiency of natural gas plants in the US in 2007 to be 41% by comparing average emissions of all natural gas plants in the US to the emissions at 100% efficient combustion of natural gas, using data from the EIA.

The fuel cells would have to be 82% efficient for that claim to be true, and that would certainly be very impressive (certainly higher than hydrogen fuel cells).

An average American household seems to draw under about 1-2kW most of the time, but sometimes it can peak to near 10kW or over. I wonder how much kW it outputs.

A major improvement this makes over other SOFCs is low temperature operation though.

BBC - dot.Maggie: Valley Vibe: Is the Bloom Box energy nirvana?

Seems like they have some well known backers and trial customers already.

First I should say that I would be very happy if humanity managed to find a cheap, safe, clean, reliable source of energy which would allow us to abandon fossil fuels such as natural gas (NG), oil, and coal. Actually, I think we have, but it's not the Bloom Box.

Since the company has released very few hard numbers at this point, we have to analyze their prose to determine how credible their claims are.

Here are some excerpts from their website (Bloom Energy | Be The Solution | Products - What is an Energy Server?

"Fuel cells are devices that convert fuel into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process rather than dirty combustion."

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The primary fuel mentioned is methane (both NG & biogas are mostly methane) and the oxidant is O2. Therefore the products will be H2O, energy, and CO2 (assuming an excess of O2). It doesn't matter which route you take, fuel cell or combustion, the products will be the same. So one process is not inherently "cleaner" than the other. Both will produce CO2. The only possible difference would be the amount of usable energy that could be captured per unit of CH4 consumed. From what I've read, it sounds like the efficiency would come from the distributed nature of the generators, rather than any inherent efficiency in the BB.

"Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100kW of power, enough to meet the baseload needs of 100 average homes or a small office building... day and night, in roughly the footprint of a standard parking space. For more power simply add more energy servers."

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So, B.E. is working on the assumption of 1kW per household, baseload. What happens when demand spikes to 10kW per household? Keep in mind that the 100kW "Energy Server" costs somewhere between US$700,000 and US$800,000. Also, keep in mind that you have to pay for the NG on top of that. NG is cheap at the moment, but if a significant percentage of electricity generation in North America were to switch to BBs, the price of NG would likely increase.

Compare this initial investment to solar (with no CO2 emissions) at $3.50/W (weSRCH.com - intermidate page - message) (installation costs not included). A 100 kW solar PV system would cost US$350,000, and the peak electricity that it produces is more valuable than baseload electricity. I don't have numbers handy for geothermal or wind power, but my guess is that they are also cheaper than Bloom Box electricity.

Finally, consider durability. Most solar PV panels come with at least a 20 year warranty, some even have 25 or 30 year warranties. How long will the Bloom Box last? Keep in mind that its operating temperature is somewhere between 800 - 1000 degrees Celsius (1500 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit), which makes it inherently prone to corrosion, especially in the presence of O2. Some of the units that have been installed at ebay, Google, etc. have already failed.

Anyway, I suppose that what I'm saying is that while the BB may be cleaner than coal fired, or oil fired (Hawaii) generation, but it is not some kind of energy panacea, as some people would have us believe. There are cleaner, safer, cheaper, and more reliable alternatives (geothermal or hydro for baseload, solar PV for peak). Don't get sucked in by the hype machine.

Looked at their uber-greenwashed web site, found no real numbers or specifications or working prototype information. Me thinks this Bloom thing is a P.R. campaign by American Petrouleum Institute.

AntronX said:

Looked at their uber-greenwashed web site, found no real numbers or specifications or working prototype information. Me thinks this Bloom thing is a P.R. campaign by American Petrouleum Institute.

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To be fair, their data sheet is pretty extensive.
Bloom Energy | Be The Solution | Data Sheet

At 773lbsCO2/MWh, it is slightly better than the California grid factoring in grid losses(724/93% grid efficiency = 779). It's about 54% the CO2 of the US grid and 68% of the CO2 of natural gas plants in the US. Of course they do say it only gets these numbers when operating at their specified efficiency of 50+%.

But it appears their NOx and SOx numbers are expectedly much lower.

The specs say the 100kW "server" weighs 10 tons (!) and the dimensions are bigger than most cars, so it obviously will not work for cars.

It seems industry competitors like UTC is saying there is nothing special about the Bloom Box except perhaps being a bit more compact than their solutions. Bloom Box was just able to hype their product to a level that other SOFC companies haven't been able to do.

Edit:
Just searching on the internet, one of the commenter in a news site posted evaluation documents of the Bloom fuel cell. It seems average efficiency is 46% and the power output dropped dramatically (lost about 4-5kW out of a 25kW system) after a little bit more than 2 months. Although to be fair, the drop may be a factor of the cold winter weather. There are similar drops in efficiency. It seems their 50+% claim is only peak efficiency, judging from this evaluation.
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/review09/fc_46_mitlitsky.pdf
Above pdf link is from number 5 link here:
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/annual_review09_fuelcells.html

Bloom Box Launch: Bloom Energy Press Conference Criticized For Being Light On Details

The lack of details even in the official launch Wednesday of Bloom Energy's first product concerned some experts, who said it's not possible yet to measure the true cost of generating power using a Bloom box and to determine whether Bloom Energy's technology is substantially different from other fuel-cell companies'.

"I would try to take a healthy dose of skepticism. What they've demonstrated is they have these systems and they've been able to deploy them," said Bryan Pivovar, fuel cell group manager of the Hydrogen Technologies and Systems Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "There's nothing I've seen out of Bloom that makes me believe there's anything special about the way they're putting things together and what their approach is."

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Scott Samuelsen, director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine, said he was concerned that Bloom Energy's boxes haven't been deployed long enough to evaluate their long-term reliability.

"Most customers are looking for a minimum of five years solid performance with a new technology," he said. "We don't know the minimum. We know almost nothing about the company, almost nothing about the technology, and there are a number of manufacturers around the world doing the same thing. ... It's cause to be cautious and recognize that there's going to be a path that has to be followed that will take some time."

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But it appears their NOx and SOx numbers are expectedly much lower.

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I imagine that those numbers would depend entirely on the purity of the fuel. With absolutely pure CH4 there should be no NOx or SOx, but that is a very unlikely scenario. If the fuel contains high levels of sulfur compounds and nitrogen compounds, then the emissions of SOx and NOx will be correspondingly higher.

Personally, I have to commend Bloom for bringing something to market. Like the Roadster, it's first generation and, so, expensive, unproven, and easy to find fault with. But it's come out of the lab and is available today.

Sure it doesn't live up to it's hype. Bloom should probably tone it down a few notches. Maybe stop talking about putting one in every basement. They should acknowledge that this is an incremental improvement with the potential to be a game-changer. And, to that end, continue to market to high profile customers who are willing to assume the risk of early adoption - with the understanding that they are laying the groundwork for the rest of us.

I hope that, unlike the Segway, the hype doesn't get shoveled so deep they get buried in it.

Somewhat related:

ClearEdge Power | Delivering Smart Energy Today

TEG said:

Somewhat related:

ClearEdge Power | Delivering Smart Energy Today

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Interesting. In my comments above I almost wrote that Bloom was the first to bring this to market, and then back-tracked because I had a strong feeling that wasn't true. If ClearEdge's marketing claims (reduce power cost by 30%-50%) are anywhere near true, then they beat out the Bloom Box. Plus, they are marketing residential units today - not ten years from now. (Sadly, not in my area).

So why haven't we heard of ClearEdge? Not the same hype machine? No access to 60 Minutes?

What differentiates the Bloom Box from them that Kleiner Perkins saw fit to invest nearly half a million in Bloom?

Personally, I have to commend Bloom for A) snagging Kleiner Perkins as an investment partner and B) snagging CBS as a PR partner. Looks like a pre-IPO hype opportunity before entering an SEC quiet period. Ka-ching!

Here is a link with a lot of good info on development of SOFC for utility power, and the Bloom Box hype:

The Energy Collective | Power. Policy. Climate. The global energy conversation starts here.

GSP

Oorja Readies its Competitor to Bloom Energy, Panasonic : Greentech Media

Love the subtitle...

If the "hot box" longevity is still a major issue, it makes me ponder use of fuel cells as emergency backup generators instead of primary power sources.
It sounds like running it 24x7 wears out the catalyst in a few years, but there probably isn't any major calendar degradation if it is sitting in "standby mode".

Much less valuable as a backup source, but still a possible niche market where they could avoid one of their shortcomings.