Newly Unveiled Bloom Boxes Show Promise for Clean, Affordable Energy
K.R. Sridnar (r.) opens the Bloom Box to CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl and the world's eyes for the first time. (image: digitaltrends.com)
On Sunday, 60 Minutes premiered a technology so stunning that, if legitimate, will transform the world.
The “Bloom Box,” is a black, refrigerator-sized box purportedly requiring inputs of only air and gas to produce the total energy consumed by a home residence, emitting little pollution and eliminating reliance on the electrical grid. Inventor K.R. Sridhar revealed that the device merely contains a stack of wafers made of compressed sand painted a different color on each side, each separated by a plate of cheap metal alloy. The device appears to rely on an advance in fuel cell science that has yet to be spelled out.
Under secret R&D for nearly 10 years, Bloom Energy’s announcement comes with an air of credibility because high-tech, high profile companies eBay and Google have been testing an industrial version of the Bloom Box for months and have found the results to be more than satisfactory. That, and the $400 million price tag that primary venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins says has been the device’s total investment, is what’s crediting this latest green tech gadget with the more than usual attention.
The Bloom Energy device has the appearance of a conventional solid oxide fuel cell. Each ceramic-alloy tile in the stack produces its own voltage. The metal plate captures electrons of gaseous hydrogen and stewards them through a circuit before the presence of oxygen allows the borrowed electrons and fuel to recombine. Most fuel cells require platinum to serve as the continuous catalyst because of the metal’s unusual ability to withstand taxing chemical environments, but the precious metal’s high cost has limited chances for existing fuel cells’ widespread commercial use. Also, most fuel cells require pure hydrogen as the fuel, which has steep transport and storage costs. But Sridhar claims that his fuel cell uses any natural gas or renewable fuel, including gas from landfills and biomass. In addition, his device is so energy efficient that one tile produces enough electricity for a single light bulb, and a pile of 64 produces enough to power a Starbucks.
Sridhar apparently came up with the idea to make electricity from air and natural gas after first designing its reverse, a small machine for NASA that could convert electricity to air, intended to allow human survival on Mars.
EBay installed five boxes nine months ago, each run on bio-gas and therefore carbon neutral. Each box was purchased for $700-$800,000 each. In total, they have already saved the company $100,000 in energy costs. According to CEO John Donahue, “It’s been very successful. They’ve done what [Bloom representatives] have said they would do.” As the 60 Minutes camera panned over solar panels on the rooftops of a facility elsewhere on eBay’s San Jose campus, Donahue said the Bloom Boxes produced five times more power than five buildings worth of solar cells, at a higher efficiency.
With a capacity for generating massive amounts of electricity at supreme efficiency, the Bloom Box could be a truly viable alternative energy source for commercial and residential buildings.
Along with Google and Ebay, Walmart, FedEx, and Staples, are among some of the twenty companies that have already signed contracts with Bloom Energy. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell who sits on the board of Bloom Energy, offered his personal endorsement.
In the interview with CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl, Sridhar said he envisioned the technology would be used to power residences all over the world, including poor communities in Africa as well as the wealthy. “In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home. A unit should cost less than $3,000,” Sridhar stated. “Hopeful” skeptic Michael Kanellos, editor of the Web site Greentech Media, said that even if Bloom Energy could produce make a mass-manufactured product at a commercial price, its ultimate profitability would wane as companies already holding patents in fuel cell technology race to the bottom to release even cheaper versions.
As Bloom Boxes use advanced fuel cell technology to generate electricity, their use will have little direct effect on heating oil users. The boxes do produce heat as a by-product of electrical generation, but a way to focus that by-product into a residential heat source has yet to be devised. Since most heating oil users do not have a natural gas supply to their home, they would have to seek out alternative fuel sources for their Bloom Box. Chances are, over the next five or ten years it will take for Bloom Boxes to reach a suitable price point for consumers, those alternative fuel sources will become more readily available.
Until then, we can look forward to learning more about Bloom Boxes when Bloom Energy officially releases the product on Wednesday.
