Bloom Energy Server
Encyclopedia
The Bloom Energy Server is a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) made by Bloom Energy, of Sunnyvale, California
, that can use a wide variety of inputs (including liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons produced from bio sources) to generate electricity
on the site where it will be used.It is highly efficient, low cost and has lower polluting emissions. This type of fuel cell can withstand temperatures of up to 1800ºF, which would cause many other types of fuel cells to breakdown or need maintenance, and is highly advantageous for its smooth operation. According to the company, a single cell (one 100 × 100 mm metal alloy plate between two ceramic layers) generates 25 watts.
Bloom say that two hundred servers have been deployed in California for a number of corporations like eBay, Google, Wal-Mart and many more.
-based ink on one side (anode) and another black (probably Lanthanum strontium manganite
) ink on the other side (cathode), . 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--" but in fact these materials are widely known in the field of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). 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; but this material is also one of the most common electrolyte
materials in the field. , which is assigned to Bloom Energy Corporation, says that the "electrolyte includes yttria stabilized zirconia and a scandia stabilized zirconia, such as a scandia ceria stabilized zirconia". ScSZ has a higher conductivity than YSZ at lower temperatures which provides greater efficiency and higher reliability when used as an electrolyte in SOFC applications. Scandia is scandium oxide (Sc3O2) which is a transition metal oxide that is sold between US$1400 to US$2000 per kilogram in 99.9% form. Current annual world wide production of scandium
is less than 2000 kilogram. Most of the 5000 kilogram used annually is sourced from limited former Soviet era stockpiles.
To save money, the Bloom Energy Server uses inexpensive metal alloy
plates for electric conductance between the two ceramic
fast ion conductor
plates. In competing lower temperature fuel cells, platinum
is required at the cathode.
.
from the large venture capital
firm Kleiner Perkins. 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 and Vinod Khosla
.
The company, originally called Ion America, was renamed to Bloom Energy in 2006.
Sridhar credited his nine-year-old son for the name, saying that his son believed jobs, lives, environment and children would bloom. One of the celebrities appearing at the product launch was Michael R. Bloomberg, who appeared by video link. Bloomberg's business news network covered the event, but was attributed every statement to "Bloom Energy".
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. 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. On February 24, 2010, the company held its first press conference.
The capital costs according to NewsWeek magazine is $7–8 per watt. http://www.newsweek.com/id/236860
According to the New York Times (Green Blog), in early 2011 "... Bloom Energy ... unveiled a service to allow customers to buy the electricity generated by its fuel cells without incurring the capital costs of purchasing the six-figure devices.... Under the Bloom Electrons service http://www.bloomenergy.com/benefits/, customers sign 10-year contracts to purchase the electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers while the company retains ownership of the fuel cells and responsibility for their maintenance.... 'We’re able to tell customers, ‘You don’t have to put any money up front, you pay only for the electrons you use and it’s good for your pocketbook and good for planet,’ ' [CEO K.R. Sridhar] said."
. Twenty percent of the Bloom Energy Server cost savings depend upon avoiding transfer losses that result from energy grid use.
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.
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.
in July 2008. Four such servers were installed at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California
, which was Bloom Energy's first customer. Another installation is for five boxes to make up to 500 kW at eBay
headquarters in San Jose, California
. Bloom Energy states that their customers include Staples (300 kW - December 2008), Walmart (800 kW - January 2010), FedEx
(500 kW), The Coca-Cola Company
(500 kW) and Bank of America
(500 kW). Each of these installations (current or planned) are located in California.
. Sridhar plans to install Bloom Energy Servers in third world nations. Ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
, Colin Powell
, now a Bloom
Energy board member, 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.
tech blogger Maggie Shiels, Bloom Energy is "being very coy and playful about what it will reveal to the press." She quotes Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media
regarding the general scope and feasibility of Bloom Energy's plans: fuel cell
s 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. 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. 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 enough to be truly revolutionary.
Bloom Energy Server technology is based upon stacking small fuel cells which operate in concert. USA Today claims that 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; however, many other solid oxide fuel cell producers have solved that problem in the past. Scott Samuelsen of the University of California, Irvine
National Fuel Cell Research Center questions how long the reliable operational life of 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." 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."
John Doerr, a venture capitalist, who has a large investment in the company, asserts that the Bloom Energy Server is cheaper and cleaner than the grid. 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 33-48%, the Bloom Energy Server is up to twice as efficient as a gas fired power station. 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. Jonathan Fahey of Forbes
wrote:
gas turbine power plant (CCGT) can reach 60% overall efficiency. Sridhar says Bloom Boxes convert chemical energy to electrical energy in one step, and are more fuel efficient than current gas fired power stations and also reduce transmission/distribution losses by producing power where it is used.
Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100kW of power, enough to meet the baseload needs of 100 average homes or a small office building.
Sridhar also said the boxes will have a 10 year life span, although that could include replacing the cells within the boxes during that time period. The CEO of eBay says Bloom Energy Servers have saved the company $100,000 in electricity bills since they were installed in mid-2009, yet Paul Keegan of Fortune calls that figure "meaningless without the details to see how he got there."
analyst wrote that GE
dismantled its fuel cell group five years ago and Siemens
have almost dismantled theirs. United Technologies is the only large conglomerate
that has fuel cell technology that could compete with Bloom Energy. Toshiba
only has technology to provide energy for a small device, not a neighborhood.
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. Sprint has been using fuel cell power since 2005. Last year Sprint's fuel cell program received a grant of over $7 million from the United States Department of Energy
. The Sprint program has partnered with ReliOn and Altergy for fuel cell manufacture, and with Air Products as a hydrogen supplier. Business Week reported 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. United Technologies makes fuel cells costing $4,500 per kilowatt.
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 cell
s in Sridhar's description of the Bloom Energy Server. Department of Energy grant recipients included a variety of startup companies and universities.
According to an article in NewScientist, there is a claim stating the Bloom Box is "electrolyte-supported" and based on that, there are at least two well-established companies, Topsoe Fuel Cellhttp://www.topsoefuelcell.com/ and Ceres Power
, already rolling out products with more advanced non-electrolyte-supported cells. Ceres has a four-year program to install 37,500 units in the homes of customers of the UK's British Gas
.
Ballard Power's comparably scaled products are based on proton exchange membrane fuel cell
s. Ballard's 150 kW units are intended for mobile applications such as municipal buses, while their larger 1 MW stationary systems are configured from banks of 11 kW building blocks.
Another competitor that already has product in-market in Europe and Australia is Ceramic Fuel Cells
, with an efficiency of 60% for the power-only units; these fuel cells are based on proven technology spun off from Australia's CSIRO.
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...
, that can use a wide variety of inputs (including liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons produced from bio sources) to generate electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
on the site where it will be used.It is highly efficient, low cost and has lower polluting emissions. This type of fuel cell can withstand temperatures of up to 1800ºF, which would cause many other types of fuel cells to breakdown or need maintenance, and is highly advantageous for its smooth operation. According to the company, a single cell (one 100 × 100 mm metal alloy plate between two ceramic layers) generates 25 watts.
Bloom say that two hundred servers have been deployed in California for a number of corporations like eBay, Google, Wal-Mart and many more.
Technology
The Bloom Energy Server uses thin white ceramic plates (100 × 100 mm) which are claimed to be made from "beach sand" . Each ceramic plate is coated with a green nickel oxideNickel(II) oxide
Nickel oxide is the chemical compound with the formula NiO. It is notable as being the only well characterized oxide of nickel . The mineralogical form of NiO, bunsenite, is very rare. It is classified as a basic metal oxide...
-based ink on one side (anode) and another black (probably Lanthanum strontium manganite
Lanthanum strontium manganite
Lanthanum strontium manganite is an oxide ceramic material with the general formula La1-xSrxMnO3, where x describes the doping level and is usually in the range of 10-20%....
) ink on the other side (cathode), . According to the San Jose Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
The San Jose Mercury News is a daily newspaper in San Jose, California. On its web site, however, it calls itself Silicon Valley Mercury News. The paper is owned by MediaNews Group...
, "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--" but in fact these materials are widely known in the field of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Wired reports that the secret ingredient may be yttria-stabilized zirconia
Yttria-stabilized zirconia
Yttria-stabilized zirconia is a zirconium-oxide based ceramic, in which the particular crystal structure of zirconium oxide is made stable at room temperature by an addition of yttrium oxide...
based upon a 2006 patent filing (7,572,530) that was granted to Bloom in 2009; but this material is also one of the most common electrolyte
Electrolyte
In chemistry, an electrolyte is any substance containing free ions that make the substance electrically conductive. The most typical electrolyte is an ionic solution, but molten electrolytes and solid electrolytes are also possible....
materials in the field. , which is assigned to Bloom Energy Corporation, says that the "electrolyte includes yttria stabilized zirconia and a scandia stabilized zirconia, such as a scandia ceria stabilized zirconia". ScSZ has a higher conductivity than YSZ at lower temperatures which provides greater efficiency and higher reliability when used as an electrolyte in SOFC applications. Scandia is scandium oxide (Sc3O2) which is a transition metal oxide that is sold between US$1400 to US$2000 per kilogram in 99.9% form. Current annual world wide production of scandium
Scandium
Scandium is a chemical element with symbol Sc and atomic number 21. A silvery-white metallic transition metal, it has historically been sometimes classified as a rare earth element, together with yttrium and the lanthanoids...
is less than 2000 kilogram. Most of the 5000 kilogram used annually is sourced from limited former Soviet era stockpiles.
To save money, the Bloom Energy Server uses inexpensive metal alloy
Alloy
An alloy is a mixture or metallic solid solution composed of two or more elements. Complete solid solution alloys give single solid phase microstructure, while partial solutions give two or more phases that may or may not be homogeneous in distribution, depending on thermal history...
plates for electric conductance between the two ceramic
Ceramic
A ceramic is an inorganic, nonmetallic solid prepared by the action of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous...
fast ion conductor
Fast ion conductor
In solid-state ionics, fast ion conductors, also known as solid electrolytes and superionic conductors, are materials that act as solid state ion conductors and are used primarily in solid oxide fuel cells. As solid electrolytes they conduct due to the movement of ions through voids, or empty...
plates. In competing lower temperature fuel cells, platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
is required at the cathode.
Bloom Energy
Bloom Energy is the company that develops, builds, and installs Bloom Energy Servers. The company, started in 2002 by CEO K.R. Sridhar, is one of 26 named a 2010 Tech Pioneer by the World Economic ForumWorld Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
.
History
In October 2001, K.R Sridhar C.E.O had a meeting with John DoerrJohn Doerr
L. John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the president and his administration with advice and...
from the large venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
firm Kleiner Perkins. 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 and Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-born American venture capitalist and an influential personality in Silicon Valley....
.
The company, originally called Ion America, was renamed to Bloom Energy in 2006.
Sridhar credited his nine-year-old son for the name, saying that his son believed jobs, lives, environment and children would bloom. One of the celebrities appearing at the product launch was Michael R. Bloomberg, who appeared by video link. Bloomberg's business news network covered the event, but was attributed every statement to "Bloom Energy".
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. A few days later he allowed a journalist (Lesley Stahl
Lesley Stahl
Lesley Rene Stahl is an American television journalist. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS on 60 Minutes.-Personal life:...
of the CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
program 60 Minutes
60 Minutes
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....
) to see the factory for the first time. On February 24, 2010, the company held its first press conference.
Installation
The current cost of each hand-made 100 kW 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 more than halve the cost of each home sized Bloom server to under $3000. 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.The capital costs according to NewsWeek magazine is $7–8 per watt. http://www.newsweek.com/id/236860
According to the New York Times (Green Blog), in early 2011 "... Bloom Energy ... unveiled a service to allow customers to buy the electricity generated by its fuel cells without incurring the capital costs of purchasing the six-figure devices.... Under the Bloom Electrons service http://www.bloomenergy.com/benefits/, customers sign 10-year contracts to purchase the electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers while the company retains ownership of the fuel cells and responsibility for their maintenance.... 'We’re able to tell customers, ‘You don’t have to put any money up front, you pay only for the electrons you use and it’s good for your pocketbook and good for planet,’ ' [CEO K.R. Sridhar] said."
Usage
On 24 February 2010, Sridhar told Todd Woody of 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 CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Twenty percent of the Bloom Energy Server cost savings depend upon avoiding transfer losses that result from energy grid use.
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.
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.
Installations
The company says that its first 100 kW Bloom Energy Servers were shipped to GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
in July 2008. Four such servers were installed at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, which was Bloom Energy's first customer. Another installation is for five boxes to make up to 500 kW at eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
headquarters in San Jose, California
San Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
. Bloom Energy states that their customers include Staples (300 kW - December 2008), Walmart (800 kW - January 2010), FedEx
FedEx
FedEx Corporation , originally known as FDX Corporation, is a logistics services company, based in the United States with headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee...
(500 kW), The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation and manufacturer, retailer and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. The company is best known for its flagship product Coca-Cola, invented in 1886 by pharmacist John Stith Pemberton in Columbus, Georgia...
(500 kW) and Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
(500 kW). Each of these installations (current or planned) are located in California.
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 forcesArmed forces
The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...
. Sridhar plans to install Bloom Energy Servers in third world nations. Ex-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States Armed Forces, and is the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council and the Secretary of Defense...
, Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
, now a Bloom
Energy board member, 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.
Feasibility
According to BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
tech blogger Maggie Shiels, Bloom Energy is "being very coy and playful about what it will reveal to the press." She quotes Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media
Greentech Media
Greentech Media is a startup media company based in Massachusetts, United States, that generates research and news on the green technology market....
regarding the general scope and feasibility of Bloom Energy's plans: fuel cell
Fuel cell
A fuel cell is a device that converts the chemical energy from a fuel into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen or another oxidizing agent. Hydrogen is the most common fuel, but hydrocarbons such as natural gas and alcohols like methanol are sometimes used...
s 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. If Bloom Energy can develop such a technology, Kanellos predicts that established energy firms such as General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
would derive most of the profits due to greater ability to manufacture and market a product. 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 enough to be truly revolutionary.
Bloom Energy Server technology is based upon stacking small fuel cells which operate in concert. USA Today claims that 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; however, many other solid oxide fuel cell producers have solved that problem in the past. Scott Samuelsen of the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
National Fuel Cell Research Center questions how long the reliable operational life of 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." Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
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."
John Doerr, a venture capitalist, who has a large investment in the company, asserts that the Bloom Energy Server is cheaper and cleaner than the grid. An expert at Gerson Lehrman Group
Gerson Lehrman Group
Gerson Lehrman Group , founded in 1998 and headquartered in New York City, operates an expert network platform of more than 300,000 subject matter experts who provide independent consulting services to companies around the world....
wrote that, given today's electricity transmission losses of about 7% and utility-size gas fired power stations efficiency of 33-48%, the Bloom Energy Server is up to twice as efficient as a gas fired power station. In a followup story entitled "Bloom Box: Segway
Segway PT
The Segway PT is a two-wheeled, self-balancing transportation machine invented by Dean Kamen. It is produced by Segway Inc. of New Hampshire, USA. The name "Segway" is a homophone of "segue" while "PT" denotes personal transporter....
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. Jonathan Fahey of Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
wrote:
Efficiency
Current gas fired power stations convert chemical energy to thermal energy to mechanical energy to electrical energy. A modern combined cycleCombined cycle
In electric power generation a combined cycle is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem off the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy, which in turn usually drives electrical generators...
gas turbine power plant (CCGT) can reach 60% overall efficiency. Sridhar says Bloom Boxes convert chemical energy to electrical energy in one step, and are more fuel efficient than current gas fired power stations and also reduce transmission/distribution losses by producing power where it is used.
Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100kW of power, enough to meet the baseload needs of 100 average homes or a small office building.
Sridhar also said the boxes will have a 10 year life span, although that could include replacing the cells within the boxes during that time period. The CEO of eBay says Bloom Energy Servers have saved the company $100,000 in electricity bills since they were installed in mid-2009, yet Paul Keegan of Fortune calls that figure "meaningless without the details to see how he got there."
Criticisms
The high capital costs of the Bloom ($7–8/watt) make the economic feasibility of the Bloom questionable. Over ten years the Bloom will generate 8,760,000kWh. At 50% efficiency, it will consume 600,000 therms of natural gas. With a natural gas price of $0.86 per therm, it would cost $520,000 in fuel with a capital cost of $700,000. This makes a total cost of $1,220,000 and ten year electricity cost of $0.14/kWh. These numbers are highly optimistic and assume zero maintenance, zero downtime, minimal installation costs, and optimistic efficiency.Competition
A Gerson Lehrman GroupGerson Lehrman Group
Gerson Lehrman Group , founded in 1998 and headquartered in New York City, operates an expert network platform of more than 300,000 subject matter experts who provide independent consulting services to companies around the world....
analyst wrote that GE
Gê
Gê are the people who spoke Ge languages of the northern South American Caribbean coast and Brazil. In Brazil the Gê were found in Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Piaui, Mato Grosso, Goias, Tocantins, Maranhão, and as far south as Paraguay....
dismantled its fuel cell group five years ago and Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
have almost dismantled theirs. United Technologies is the only large conglomerate
Conglomerate (company)
A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...
that has fuel cell technology that could compete with Bloom Energy. Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
only has technology to provide energy for a small device, not a neighborhood.
Katie Fehrenbacher of Business Week reports that Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel Corporation is an American telecommunications company based in Overland Park, Kansas. The company owns and operates Sprint, the third largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, with 53.4 million customers, behind Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility...
owns 15 patents on hydrogen fuel cells and is using 250 fuel cells to provide backup power for its operations. Sprint has been using fuel cell power since 2005. Last year Sprint's fuel cell program received a grant of over $7 million from the United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
. The Sprint program has partnered with ReliOn and Altergy for fuel cell manufacture, and with Air Products as a hydrogen supplier. Business Week reported 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. United Technologies makes fuel cells costing $4,500 per kilowatt.
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 cell
Solar cell
A solar cell is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect....
s in Sridhar's description of the Bloom Energy Server. Department of Energy grant recipients included a variety of startup companies and universities.
According to an article in NewScientist, there is a claim stating the Bloom Box is "electrolyte-supported" and based on that, there are at least two well-established companies, Topsoe Fuel Cellhttp://www.topsoefuelcell.com/ and Ceres Power
Ceres Power
Ceres Power is a UK-based company that is developing a fuel-cell boiler for the UK domestic CHP market.The boiler produces both heat and electricity. The design is small enough to be wall-mounted and is therefore compatible with the layout of most central heating systems in the UK.At the heart of...
, already rolling out products with more advanced non-electrolyte-supported cells. Ceres has a four-year program to install 37,500 units in the homes of customers of the UK's British Gas
Centrica
Centrica plc is a multinational utility company, based in the United Kingdom but also with interests in North America. Centrica is the largest supplier of gas to domestic customers in the UK, and one of the largest suppliers of electricity, operating under the trading names "Scottish Gas" in...
.
Ballard Power's comparably scaled products are based on proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells, also known as polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells , are a type of fuel cell being developed for transport applications as well as for stationary fuel cell applications and portable fuel cell applications. Their distinguishing features include lower...
s. Ballard's 150 kW units are intended for mobile applications such as municipal buses, while their larger 1 MW stationary systems are configured from banks of 11 kW building blocks.
Another competitor that already has product in-market in Europe and Australia is Ceramic Fuel Cells
Ceramic Fuel Cells
Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd is an Australian fuel cell technology company, based in Melbourne. The company produces the "BlueGen" gas-to-electricity generators. CFCL's develops solid oxide fuel cell technology to provide reliable, energy efficient, high quality, and low-emission electricity from...
, with an efficiency of 60% for the power-only units; these fuel cells are based on proven technology spun off from Australia's CSIRO.