This week much of the ink in clean tech was dedicated to the potentially revolutionary Bloom Box -- a fuel-cell-based electricity generator developed by hitherto-secretive start-up Bloom Energy. The hype surrounding the technology was summed up well by Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech, who wrote candidly in her Why Bloom Energy Is and Isn't the Google of Greentech piece, "We’ve had record page views this week. A coworker complained to me this morning that there’s no news, as Bloom has sucked all of the air out of the industry..."
Frankly, the enthusiasm is warranted (for the best wholesale summary of the Bloom Box see Green Inc.'s A Secretive Start-Up Raises the Curtain; for the nitty-gritty on how Bloom Boxes work see Brooke Crothers' piece at CNET). The technology is sleak, clean, and practical. As the Green Inc. piece points out, five Bloom Box servers installed at eBay's San Jose campus "now supply 15 percent of [its] electricity... or about five times as much energy as generated by its 3,248 solar panels." (For more info on how Bloom stacks up in the renewable world, Michael Kanellos at GreenTech Media has a good piece on how Bloom compares to solar.)
For us, however, the level of enthusiasm we permit ourselves is dictated by the viability of a residential application of the Bloom Box. In the 60 Minutes piece that ripped Bloom from obscurity last Sunday it was mentioned that a $3,000 residential version could soon be available. We think it's worth tempering this exciting tidbit with the fact that this application is at least a decade away, as Bloom Energy founder and CEO K.R. Sridhar made clear at the Bloom Energy unveiling event on Wednesday.
So yes, quite frankly, we're as smitten as anyone else, but believe it's best to err on the side of caution: while Bloom Energy servers are certainly promising, we realize that getting too excited about a technology this young can get you into trouble!
Comments
Yep, conservation is still, by far the best solution to energy savings -- I started buying this "new technology" a few years back. In some cases, they just give conservation away, in other cases, it takes a little money and effort to get some.
And by the way, where does the fuel for the fuel cell come from? Fuel cells are associated with renewable energy, but they really are not -- they are really a special kind of battery, storing energy. This is an important part of making our energy systems work well with renewables, to be sure, but sometimes I think people see fuel cells as a kind of magic. They are part of the equation.
Until then, I am getting by with a lot less just by being smarter about how and when to use what I have.
Tom
Posted by Tom Harrison on Feb 26, 2010 5:59pm