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Bloom Energy Server

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The Bloom Energy Server is a solid oxide fuel cell made by Bloom Energy that can use liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons (such as gasoline, diesel or propane[1] produced from fossil or bio sources) to generate electricity on the site where it will be used, and it is at least as efficient as a traditional large-scale coal power station[2][3] According to the company, a single cell (one metal alloy plate between the two ceramic layers) generates 25 watts.[4]

The Bloom Energy Server uses thin white ceramic plates (4" x 4")[5] which are made by baking common beach sand, and each ceramic plate is coated with a "secret" green ink (anode) on one side and another secret black ink (cathode) on the other side.[6] According to the San Jose Mercury News, "Bloom's secret technology apparently lies in the proprietary green ink that acts as the anode and the black ink that acts as the cathode." Wired reports that the secret ingredient may be yttria-stabilized zirconia based upon a 2006 patent filing (7,572,530) that was granted to Bloom in 2009.[7] To save money the Bloom Energy Server uses inexpensive metal alloy plates as a fast ion conductor between the two ceramic plates, instead of platinum.[6]

According to the board of Bloom Energy, the technology works.[4][8] A Guardian report on the story added, "But industry watchers say they remain unsure exactly how it works."[4]

Bloom Energy

Bloom Energy
Company typePrivately held
PredecessorIon America
Founded2002
FounderK. R. Sridhar, John Finn, Matthias Gottmann, James McElroy, Dien Nguyen
Headquarters
Sunnyvale, California
,
USA
Key people
K. R. Sridhar (co-founder, CEO)
Productsregenerative solid oxide fuel cells
OwnerKleiner Perkins (among others)
Websitehttp://www.bloomenergy.com/

Bloom Energy is the company that develops, builds, installs Bloom Energy Servers.[9] The company was started in 2002 by CEO K.R. Sridhar[9] and is one of 26 named a 2010 Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.[10]

History

The company was originally Ion America and renamed to Bloom Energy in 2006.[11] Its current name was conceived by Sridhar's nine-year-old son because he believed jobs, lives, environment and children will bloom.[12]

In Oct 2001, Sridhar had a meeting with John Doerr from the large venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.[13] Sridhar was asking for more than $100 million to start the company. Bloom Energy has received $400 million of start-up funding from venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins[6] and Vinod Khosla.[14] In 2008 the company had a loss of $85 million.[9]

The CEO gave a media interview (to Fortune Magazine) for the first time in 2010, eight years after founding the company, because of pressure from his customers.[9] A few days later he allowed a journalist (Lesley Stahl of the CBS News program 60 Minutes) to see the factory for the first time.[15] On February 24, 2010, the company held its first press conference.[11]

Costs

The current cost of each hand-made 100kw Bloom Energy Server is $700,000–800,000. In the next stage, which will likely be mass production of home-sized units, Sridhar hopes to bring down the cost of each of home sized Bloom servers to under $3000.[6] Bloom estimates the size of a home sized server as 1 kilowatt, although cNet News reports critical estimates recommend 5 kW capacity for a residence.[16] Twenty percent of the Bloom Energy Server cost savings depend upon taking avoiding transfer losses that result from energy grid use.[16]

on 24 February 2010, Sridhar told Todd Woody of the The New York Times that his devices are making electricity for 8–10 cents/kwh using natural gas, which is cheaper than today's electricity prices in some parts of the United States, such as California.[17][18]

Bloom Energy is developing Power Purchase Agreements to sell the electricity produced by the boxes, rather than sell the boxes themselves, in order to address customers' fears about box maintenance, reliability and servicing costs.[15]

Fifteen percent of the power at eBay is created with Bloom technology; after tax incentives that paid half the cost eBay expects "a three-year payback period" for the remaining half, based on California's $0.14/kWh cost of commercial electricity.[19]

Installations

The company says that its first 100kw Bloom Energy Servers were shipped to Google in July 2008.[20] Four Bloom Servers to make up to 400 kW (kilowatts) were installed at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, who were Bloom Energy's first customer.[15] Another installation is for five boxes[1] to make up to 500 kW at eBay headquarters in San Jose, California.[15] Bloom Energy states that their customers include Staples (300kw - Dec 2008),[21] Walmart (800kw - Jan 2010),[22] FedEx (500kw),[23] Coke (500kw)[24] and Bank of America (500kw).[25][26]

Portable units

Writing for a Wall Street Journal blog, Rebecca Smith and Jim Carlton speculated that portable Bloom Energy Servers could be used instead of traditional generators by the armed forces.[27] Sridhar plans to install Bloom Energy Servers in third world nations.[28] Ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell said the Bloom Energy generators could be useful to the military because they are lighter, more efficient, and generate less heat than what the military uses now.[29]

Feasibility

Bloom Energy

According to BBC tech blogger Maggie Shiels, Bloom Energy is "being very coy and playful about what it will reveal to the press".[30] She quotes Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media regarding the general scope and feasibility of Bloom Energy's plans: fuel cells are not new technology and in order to succeed in the marketplace the Bloom Energy Server would need to be cheaper than existing types of renewable energy.[30] If Bloom Energy can develop such a technology, Kanellos predicts that established energy firms such as General Electric would derive most of the profits due to greater ability to manufacture and market a product.[30] Jacob Grose, senior analyst at Lux Research told Fortune Magazine that he doubts Dr. Sridhar has come up with a way of making these ceramic fuel cells cheaply.[9]

Bloom Energy Server technology is based upon stacking small fuel cells which operate in concert.[5][11] Bloom Energy has made a technological advance by developing stacked fuel cells where individual plates expand and contract at the same rate at high temperatures.[5] Scott Samuelsen of the University of California, Irvine National Fuel Cell Research Center questions how long the reliable operational life Bloom Servers will be. "At this point, Bloom has excellent potential, but they have yet to demonstrate that they've met the bars of reliability."[11] Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory expert Michael Tucker told the San Jose Mercury News, "Because they operate at high temperatures, they can accept other fuels like natural gas and methane, and that's an enormous advantage... The disadvantage is that they can shatter as they are heating or cooling."[11]

John Doerr, who is one of the major venture capitalists of the company, asserts that the Bloom Energy Server is cheaper and cleaner than the grid.[1][31] An expert at Gerson Lehrman Group, wrote that, given today's electricity transmission losses of about 7% and utility size gas fired power stations efficiency of 26-48%, the Bloom Energy Server is up to twice as efficient as a gas fired power station, but no less efficient than one.[2] In a followup story entitled "Bloom Box: Segway or savior?" Fortune noted on 24 February 2010 that "Bloom has still not released numbers about how much the Bloom Box costs to operate per kilowatt hour" and estimates that natural gas rather than bio-gas will be the primary source of fuel for Bloom Energy Servers.[32] Jonathan Fahey of Forbes comments:

Are we really falling for this again? Every clean tech company on the planet says it can produce clean energy cheaply, yet not a single one can. Government subsidies or mandates keep the entire worldwide industry afloat... Hand it to Bloom, the company has managed to tap into the hype machine like no other clean tech company in memory."[33]

He also said the boxes will have a 10 year life span.[18] The CEO of eBay says Bloom Energy Servers have saved the company $100,000 in electricity bills since they were installed in mid-2009,[6] yet Paul Keegan of Fortune calls that figure "meaningless without the details to see how he got there."[32]

Competition

A Gerson Lehrman Group analyst wrote that GE dismantled its fuel cell group five years ago and Siemens have almost dismantled theirs.[2] United Technologies is the only large conglomerate that has fuel cell technology that could compete with Bloom Energy.[2] Toshiba only has technology to provide energy for a small device, not a neighborhood.[2]

Katie Fehrenbacher of Business Week reports that Sprint Nextel owns 15 patents on hydrogen fuel cells and is using 250 fuel cells to provide backup power for its operations.[34] Sprint has been using fuel cell power since 2005.[34] Last year Sprint's fuel cell program received a grant of over $7 million from the United States Department of Energy.[34] The Sprint program has partnered with ReliOn and Altergy for fuel cell manufacture, and with Air Products as a hydrogen supplier.[34] Business Week that a German fuel cell firm called P21, which is based in Munich, has been working on similar projects to supply backup power for cellular operations.[34] United Technologies makes a fuel cell whose energy costs $4,500 per kilowatt.[34]

In October 2009 the Department of Energy awarded nearly $25 million in grants for research and development of solar fuels, which Michael Kannelos notes in Wired may be similar technology to the solar cells in Sridhar's description of the Bloom Energy Server.[7][35] Department of Energy grant recipients included a variety of startup companies and universities.[35]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Tech Pioneers Who Will Change Your Life". Time Magazine. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d e "GLG Expert Contributor" (22 February 2010). "Answering the Unanswered Questions". Gerson Lehrman Group. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ "Bloom Box: What is it and how does it work?". Christian Science Monitor. 22 February 2010.
  4. ^ a b c Goldenberg, Suzanne (22 February 2010). "Bloom Box fuel cell launch". The Guardian.
  5. ^ a b c Schmit, Julie (24 February 2010). "Clean, cheap power from fuel cells in a box?". USA Today.
  6. ^ a b c d e "The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?". 60 Minutes. February 21, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
  7. ^ a b Kanellos, Michael (22 February 2010). "Bloom Box fuel cell launch". Wired. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  8. ^ Hachman, Mark (24 February 2010). "Hype Begins to Ramp for Bloom Box Unveiling". PC Magazine.
  9. ^ a b c d e Keegan, Paul (February 19, 2010). "Is K.R. Sridhar's 'magic box' ready for prime time?". Fortune. Retrieved 2010-02-22. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) Cite error: The named reference "bstfort" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Bloom Energy Shifts Power via Fuel Cells". BusinessWeek. December 7, 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
  11. ^ a b c d e "Bloom Energy unveils its 'Bloom Box' fuel cell". San Jose Mercury News. February 24, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  12. ^ Gaylord, Chris (22 February 2010). "Bloom Box: What 60 Minutes left out". Christian Science Monitor.
  13. ^ "The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?". CBS News. February 18, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  14. ^ Coursey, David (February 23, 2010). "Why I'm Bullish on Bloom Energy". PC World. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  15. ^ a b c d "Bloom Energy Revealed on 60 Minutes! : Greentech Media". Greentechmedia.com. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-24. Cite error: The named reference "gtm" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  16. ^ a b "Bloom Box challenges: Reliability, cost". cNet News. February 24, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  17. ^ Woody, Todd. "A maker of fuel cells blooms in California". New York Times blogs.
  18. ^ a b Woody, Todd (24 February 2010). "Bloom Energy Claims a New Fuel Cell Technology". New York Times.
  19. ^ "A Maker of Fuel Cells Blooms in California". The New York Times. February 24, 2010. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  20. ^ ""NASA™ Technology Comes to Earth"". Retrieved 24 February 2010. (primary source)
  21. ^ "Be The Solution | Customer Story: Staples". Bloom Energy. Retrieved 2010-02-24. (primary source)
  22. ^ "Be The Solution | Customer Story: Walmart". Bloom Energy. Retrieved 2010-02-24. (primary source)
  23. ^ "Be The Solution | Customer Story: FedEx". Bloom Energy. Retrieved 2010-02-24. (primary source)
  24. ^ [1]
  25. ^ [2]
  26. ^ "Press kit". Bloom Energy. Retrieved 24 February 2010. (primary source)
  27. ^ "The Bloom Box: Energy Breakthrough or Silicon Valley Hype?". Wall Street Journal.
  28. ^ "Live from the Bloom Box press event". Engadget. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  29. ^ [3]
  30. ^ a b c "Valley Vibe: Is the Bloom Box energy nirvana?". BBC. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
  31. ^ E-mail This. "Bloom Energy Claims a New Fuel Cell Technology - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com". Dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  32. ^ a b "Bloom Box: Segway or savior?". Fortune. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  33. ^ "What Bloom Energy Needs To Prove". Forbes. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  34. ^ a b c d e f Fehrenbacher, Katie (February 23, 2010). "Phone Companies Are Developing Fuel Cells, Too". Business Week. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
  35. ^ a b "New Form of Solar Energy: Direct Solar Fuel". Business Week. October 28, 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
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