Electricity can be made by Bloom Box which is a fuel cell using oxygen and natural gas. Bloom Energy’s Bloom Box was featured on “60 Minutes” Sunday, a few days ahead of the company’s formal launch on Sept. 1. Bloom Energy advertised by saying Bloom Box gives clean, reliable and affordable power as an “energy server” for home. Energy needs are met for large corporations by this stand-alone unit already. Bloom Box may just replace power plants and transmission lines of the energy grid, says Bloom Energy. Before anybody will really get the Bloom Box though, the price needs to come down.
Bloom Box saves eBay, in 9 months, about $ 100,000
The Bloom Box has been 10 years within the making. In its “60 Minutes” feature on Bloom Energy, CBS News reports that company founder K.R. Stridhar has raised about $ 400 million for the technology. The Bloom Box holds a stack of ceramic discs coated with secret formulas on each side. Natural gas and oxygen are on both sides. The disk creates an electro-chemical reaction between the two elements to produce power. More power comes with more discs. A Bloom Box with 64 disks will power a Starbucks. Twenty companies in California are using Bloom Boxes, where a 20 percent state subsidy in addition to a 30 percent federal tax break for clean energy cuts the $ 800,000 price in half. John Donahoe, eBay’s CEO, told CBS News that five Bloom Boxes running on carbon-neutral bio-gas from landfill waste, installed nine months ago, have saved more than $ 100,000 in electricity costs.
Will the electrical grid be scrapped?
Stridhar told Newsweek the Bloom Box could replace the power plants and transmission lines of the electrical grid like personal computers replaced mainframes. Huge data centers are made by small servers put in groups together. Google, along with other Bloom Energy customers, do this. Bloom Boxes can be used within the same way. Energy farms can be created. Stridhar admitted that subsidies are the only thing making the Bloom Box fly now. But economies of scale could bring the price down to about a $ 3,000 investment for a household installation. He said every doubling in volume brings a 10-to-15 percent reduction in cost.
Then there’s the fuel cell market
There ought to be more of a demand for Bloom box soon. Fuel cell costs goes down with advances in technology, says altenergymag.com that published a global fuel cell market report by GBI Research. The price enables fuel cells to become commercialized by 2013. A 2008 report by Freedonia Group said that U.S. commercial fuel cell demand will increase nearly sixfold through 2012 to $ 975 million. In that time, a 41 percent growth rate in those using fuel cells for electricity is predicted.
Discover more info on this subject
CBS News
cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/60minutes/main6221135_page2.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Newsweek
newsweek.com/2010/04/22/this-is-brand-new.html
Altenenergymag
altenergymag.com/emagazine.php?art_id=1468
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