Bloom Box

[samgreco]

By all accounts, it looks to be the real deal. It's just a matter of IF they can get the costs down. These high dollar large installations is the R&D payback phase of the program. What will be interesting will be a year from now.

And I don't think that Google, eBay, Wal-Mart and FedEx would buying into a hoax this big.

 

[Dave X10]

walmart & fedex too?

I don't know. Walmart wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't know anything about FedEx's structure.

I have seen fuel cells being assembled (I was given a tour). They (the place I toured) have some government contracts. The technology isn't new. And the way-over simplified explanation as to how they work [in the video] even made it look like it has no moving parts. They do have moving parts!

I would guess... that every "current user/customer" is also an investor (hence, no bad press). And I would bet a pickle that every place saving money with those fuel cells are doing so in California. In California electric costs are about twice what we pay in most other states. So with no maintenance on the fuel cells (YET), and the government (YOU and ME) kicking in half to buy them, in any state but California... they might break even (meaning be the same cost as buying electric from the normal power company method).

I think I can do that with a [natural gas powered] generator from Home Depot.

 

[Dave X10]

By all accounts, it looks to be the real deal. It's just a matter of IF they can get the costs down. These high dollar large installations is the R&D payback phase of the program. What will be interesting will be a year from now.

And I don't think that Google, eBay, Wal-Mart and FedEx would buying into a hoax this big.

Your probably right... most people would say hoax's are perpetrated on little people.. not corporations or governments. That's how we know global warming is real.

John Doerr, the investment capitalist that put Bloom Energy together... also helped do the same for Google, Sun, Netscape, Zazzle, Amazon, Friendster, Segway, Martha Stewart Living, and more. Yet.... when the Internet bubble burst.. his fortune remained intact. He does have skeptic's and critics and is praised as well. This will be interesting to watch.

 

[sic0048]

For people that are looking at 75k to run power lines to where they live (well off the road), this could be a big win.

But if you are that far off the grid, I would bet you would still have to pay big bucks to get the fuel supply run. Perhaps you could use large on-site propane tanks and not have a fuel line run. But then you would have delivery charges etc., regularly.

 

[electron]

Their site went live, and includes more customer 'stories'.

http://bloomenergy.com/customers/

 

[damage]

here's a cnet live blog of the press conference
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20000091-248.html

engdadget too if you prefer http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/24/live-fr...ox-press-event/

 

[lpott6]

For people that are looking at 75k to run power lines to where they live (well off the road), this could be a big win.

But if you are that far off the grid, I would bet you would still have to pay big bucks to get the fuel supply run. Perhaps you could use large on-site propane tanks and not have a fuel line run. But then you would have delivery charges etc., regularly.

If you are off grid, you almost certainly will have propane for heat and hot water. At that point, the Bloom Box gets rid of the electric company completely. It is also most likely cheaper to install and maintain than solar or wind.

The big question mark is, how much does it cost to "fuel it" compared to the electric grid? Propane is not free!

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

The big question mark is, how much does it cost to "fuel it" compared to the electric grid? Propane is not free!

I agree and would love to see this comparison to a solar panel setup for a single home's use.

 

[potts.mike]

The big question mark is, how much does it cost to "fuel it" compared to the electric grid? Propane is not free!

In the Engadget photo set there is a pic of a tag on one of the units that showed max fuel consumption. It was something like 125 cubic feet per min at 15 psi. Granted this is natural gas and a commercial installation but it gives a rough starting point.

 

[Ira]

According to an article on cnet.com, a box using natural gas as the fuel produces electricity for about 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt.

What I don't understand is how they believe that a double box (or even a quad box) would be able to power a home by itself, given that a box produces about 1kW. Even though the average home may use an average of 2kW, it will often go way beyond that. I've seen spikes at my house of over 10kW, with continuous usage of well over 5kW (A/C, oven, etc., all on at the same time). My house is about 2600 sqft, so it's certainly no mansion. That's why my whole-house standby genset is rated at 22kW continuous with a surge rating of well over 30kW. Does the bloom box have a "surge capability" that they aren't talking about?

 

[damage]

The big question mark is, how much does it cost to "fuel it" compared to the electric grid? Propane is not free!

I agree and would love to see this comparison to a solar panel setup for a single home's use.

you can guesstimate based on ebay's install since they have both solar panels & bloom servers http://bit.ly/dhq1b7

they have 3246 panels, but ebay says the 5 bloom servers will generate 5x the energy of the panels over the course of a year. so one server is the equivalent of 3246 panels. a typical home installation may be 20 240W panels, i guess you could add 50% to take it completely off grid so you'd need about 1% of a bloom server. so take 1% of the max fuel consumption from the post #24

 

[Ira]

NG is selling for about $10 per thousand cubic feet. If a server uses 125 cuft per minute max, that's 7500 cuft per hour max. If the maximum output is 100kW, that means it takes about 7500 cuft of NG to produce 100kWh of electricity. That comes out to about 7.5 cents per kWh for NG fuel costs.

 

[Frunple]

The home owner will never see these in my opinion. The power companies will buy these faster than they can be produced and use them to provide power to us using the same grid we're on now.
It will cost them far more not to buy them.

 

[Dave X10]

According to an article on cnet.com, a box using natural gas as the fuel produces electricity for about 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt.

What I don't understand is how they believe that a double box (or even a quad box) would be able to power a home by itself, given that a box produces about 1kW.

That would be 8 to 10 cents... less the normal taxes and fees? I can't believe that will be allowed very long. They're has to be some sorta of permit/usage fee that will arise sooner or later. The more we sharpen our pencils and do the math on these "break throughs".... the more often they fall apart.

It is a big fat fuel cell. That is all it is. We've all read about fuel cells for several years. When fuel cells really get useful is when your in space.. or on foot... and you need more power that what you can carry in heavy old batteries. Bloom isn't the first maker of a large fuel cell.... Bloom has just been well hyped.

 

[mdesmarais]

On their site, they say the commercial unit is 100kw. So I think you need more like 2-3%, at least**. Or 2-3 "boxes". That commercial unit is something like 750,000, I think I saw. So 3% of that would be 22k, roughly.

8 to 10 cents per kw is not that great though (around here anyways) . . I paid about 14 cents last month. So I would save ~$84. So about a 20 year payback.

Assuming everything is linear, of course. ;-)

Now if you are off grid, 20k up front to buy a generator isn't too bad if the operating cost will be that low.

**To Ira's point, it might be more cost effective to add a different kind of surge capacity for off grid use- battery bank or flywheel, maybe?