Bloom box: A 100 kilowatt module at eBay's facility in San Jose, CA.
Bloom Energy
Its 100-kilowatt modules have been sold to Google, eBay, and Walmart.
The up-to-now secretive startup Bloom Energy took the wraps off its technology this week, unveiling a fuel-cell system that the company claims can run on a variety of fuels and pay for itself in three to five years via lower energy bills.
The company's founder and CEO, KR Sridhar, said at the official unveiling of the company on Wednesday that the technology--when it's powered by natural gas--can cut carbon dioxide emissions in half compared to the emissions produced conventional power sources, on average. Several major companies, including Google, eBay, and Walmart, have already bought Bloom's technology, and in the few months these fuel cells have been in operation, they've generated 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity (about enough to power 1,000 homes for a year).
According to Bloom Energy, electricity costs are lower than buying electricity from the grid because the fuel cells are efficient and because the electricity is generated on-site, avoiding the need for a grid to distribute electricity.
While Bloom is not releasing full details of the technology, it's a type of solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). Unlike hydrogen fuel cells proposed for use in vehicles, SOFCs operate at high temperatures (typically well over 600 ºC) and can run on a variety of fuels. They can be more efficient than conventional turbines for generating electricity. But their high cost and reliability problems have kept them from widespread commercial use.
Sridhar says Bloom's technology has made the fuel cells affordable. What's more, costs are expected to decrease significantly as production ramps up.
"All indications are that they have taken pretty conventional SOFC technology (zirconia electrolyte, nickel anode) and spent a lot of money to do a very good job of engineering and process development," says Jeff Bentley, CEO of CellTech Power, which is developing its own fuel cells that can run on fuels such as diesel and even coal. According to Bloom, the technology is based on planar solid oxide fuel cells that Sridhar developed as a professor at the University of Arizona.
Bloom sells 100-kilowatt modules. They're made of small, flat 25-watt fuel cells that can be stacked together. A complete 100-kilowatt module, with multiple stacks and equipment for converting DC power from the stacks into AC power to be used in buildings, is about the size of a parking space. The company says each module can power a small supermarket.
In addition to Google, eBay, and Walmart, Bloom's customers include Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, FedEx, and Staples. A 400-kilowatt system powers a building at Google that contains an experimental data center. Walmart has installed Bloom modules at two locations, where they generate between 60 to 80 percent of the electricity for the stores.
Sridhar said the long-term goal is to use the technology as both a way to generate electricity and to store it. It's possible to run the fuel cells in reverse, pumping in electricity to generate fuel. The system could then be used to store solar power generated during the day as a fuel for use at night. He says such a system, however, won't be available for another decade.
The company first started raising venture capital in 2001, and was the first energy company to be funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA, that was an earlier investor in Google. "They have spent a lot of time and money in field testing prior to making any public claims--that is refreshing for the fuel cell industry," Bentley says
The cells might eventually replace the turbines in high-efficiency power plants.
A high-power cell uses materials already on the market and operates at lower temperatures.
With catalysts created by an MIT chemist, sunlight can turn water into hydrogen. If the process can scale up, it could make solar power a dominant source of energy.
run the fuel cells in reverse?
The article says it is possible to "run the fuel cells in reverse", but I wonder if the writer really means this Bloom product; the reference is to a more general capability. For energy storage, wouldn't one need to save the CO2 from the generating phase to the gas production phase? What's the cycle efficiency?
What's the capital cost and the operating cost?
Why does it emit as much as half of conventional power plants? The GE Model H gas turbine combined cycle plant emits one quarter. Burning CH4 (natural gas methane) instead of C (coal) gets 2x the BTU per ton of CO2, and the thermal/electrical conversion efficiency of 60% gets another factor of 2x compared to the 30% typical of coal plants. So is this Bloom technology only half as good in terms of CO2 reduction?
Better yet is the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR). For an introduction to the benefits and technology visit http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh.
There is a data sheet on the Bloom web site which can be used to compute efficiency and fuel costs. The 100kW unit costs $700K, or 16 cents/kWh spread across 5 year, 8 cents over 10 years, with no interest or subsidy.
But you have to add fuel cost. The 2008&09 PG&E commercial gas price min:average:max was $.0273:.0557:.0977/kWh ($.0396:.0688:.1093 for the first 4000 therms/mo). If fuel cost is $.06/kWh and could go up to $.10/kWh as happened in 2008, it seems difficult to justify. Even with new cleantech subsidy, the cost is high compared to natural gas powered ICE backup generators. (Reliability and life are another issue with ICE engines.)
The unit is 52% efficient, i.e. 52% electricity, and 48% heat. This is better than peaking turbines, but less than combined cycle gas power plants. If the 48% waste heat could be reused on site, then there would be a considerable savings. If home units cost $3K, then they could be used for hot water and home heating. But it doesn't seem that the current units make use of waste heat.
The efficiency is a little higher than internal combustion engines-- 52% vs 37% (also suitable for biogas), but the ICE generators seem to be 10x cheaper, though with shorter operating life.
As far as CO2, these units emit 48% *more* than the PG&E grid electricity supplied to Google/eBay. I don't know how eBay gets landfill gas-- it's not near a landfill, but running off biogas is a big advantage of this fuel cell (vs other fuel cells that need clean H2. With this SOFC fuel cell, the steam reformer to convert gas into H2 is combined with the cell.
So in Sunnyvale (home of Bloom) it's not cleaner than the grid, unless you are running off landfill and sewage treatment digester gas, but Sunnyvale already uses that for electricity with ICE generators (maybe ~37% efficient?).
Also, I wonder if the waste heat could be used for fast pyrolysis-- the operating temperature is about the same. Feed waste biomass (agricultural or municipal waste) into a hopper, use the 600decC fuel cell excess heat to gasify the biomass, then use the gases to make electricity. Put the biochar back in the ground as soil amendment.
Note that running in reverse (it can't do that yet) would likely be 50% efficient comverting electricity to H2. So round trip would be about 25% efficient, or with newer highly efficient catalysts, a little under 50%. That's pretty bad compared to batteries. It doesn't seem practical to me since there are better alternatives (~$250K/kWh utility batteries).
It is a good analysis, I think if it is coupled with bio hydrocarbons it will be better, about energy technology in oil input providing intelligent service. For instance, we are in a research project about innovative approach for integrating fossil hydrocarbons and biofuels, in addition to the multiphase innovations, www.liveflowenergy.com
You are spot on.
With what Bloom has now, they aren't offering much in terms of energy efficiency that can compete with combined cycle power plants. The sole advantage of a Bloom system would be the dramatically lower NOx emissions.
Unless Bloom plans to shift to some as-yet unknown trade secret material, their Samarium doped Ceria/Yttria Stabilized Zirconia electrolyte will never become cheap. And, as no one seems to have yet pointed out, they DON'T use a Ni based anode catalyst, it is a PtRuW alloy...not cheap and there's only so much Pt in the earth's crust. So, from a material cost standpoint, there is no way to make the capital cost come down with arguments of "economies of scale".
I think bloom will become the Segway of the fuel cell market: hip, well-made, but ultimately a niche market and not even close to a revolution.
Would it be useful for powering ships and railroad locomotives? If the fuel cells don't put out carbon monoxide, locomotives using them might be suitable for trains that run mostly, but not completely, in open air, like the ones that go north from Grand Central Station, and maybe the ones that go through long tunnels in the alps.
Would it be useful for powering ships and railroad locomotives? If the fuel cells don't put out carbon monoxide, locomotives using them might be suitable for trains that run mostly, but not completely, in open air, like the ones that go north from Grand Central Station, and maybe the ones that go through long tunnels in the alps.
No, I didn't mean the Bloom product as it is currently configured--as I mention, it's a long term goal. But a fuel cell like the one in the current product could be part of that system.
As for how much better this is than conventional technology--the company did not compare it to coal plants. It essentially said that a watt of power from this system produces half the carbon dioxide emissions as a watt of power from the grid--on average.
Comparing it to grid generated electricity is somewhat like comparing it to coal since ~50% of grid electricity comes from coal at ~30% efficiency. The SOFC running on NG better beat the grid CO2 emissions/kW.
Unless the SOFC can achieve greater then 60% efficiency, it will not beat a natural gas combined cycle in terms of CO2 emissions/kW. Unless it runs on hydrogen....but where do you get hydrogen from....
I would also love to see the savings of not having to transmit the energy, although that would certainly have to be calculated specifically for each site. There are lots of losses in transmission, and this type of system would eliminate those.
I'm looking into this to see if Bloom will give more information about how they came up with their numbers. According to their website, the units are better than 50% efficient.
I talked to Sridhar in 2002 when he was still at NASA Ames for an article in SILICONINDIA magazine and there's a central angle about the market for his fuel cells that's not in the current coverage -- presumably, because Sridhar et al. now aim as much as possible to play on mass 'Green' concerns. However, note that early adopters have been the likes of Google and eBay, who want uninterrupted supplies of 'premium power' supporting their datacenters. That's what the Bloom fuel cell's primary market is. Here's part of my 2002 piece --
'“The model of power generation we currently have in America is one we’ve inherited from Edison and the Industrial Revolution,” Sridhar points out. “The socioeconomics of the Depression, when America’s rural areas were electrified, reinforced this model of large power plants at the center of a massive grid. We desperately need to move on.”
'Today, Sridhar explains, 10 percent of America’s electricity supply is “premium power.” In other words, the burgeoning digital infrastructure of American civilization — its millions of servers, workstations, storage devices, switches, routers, embedded devices and plain old PCs — requires power uninterrupted by outages and hiccups, with “clean electrons” coming in consistent voltage waveforms. Furthermore, U.S. needs for such premium power are exploding.
'“Salamon Smith Barney’s trading floor in Manhattan now uses 8.5 megawatts of premium power daily,” Sridhar says. “That’s the same amount of power as 100,000 homes or a small city. Here in Silicon Valley, Sun Microsystems uses 26 megawatts and would lose $50 million for each hour of downtime from power disruptions.”
'Still, given forecasts that premium power will account for 50 percent of U.S. electricity needs in 2010 and warnings that our industrial-era grid can’t supply it, where will this power come from?
'“As we did with telecommunications and the Internet, we need to move to a distributed model of generation,” Sridhar says. He does not believe that the old power grid will be junked — after all, it’s still a vast, valuable infrastructure. But he notes that a growing number of offices, plants and businesses are now placing power-generating systems on their premises. This trend will continue, he says. Electrical supply will be reengineered and supplemented from the bottom up, leading to its progressive decentralization as, dragged along by the demands of the Web, it mimics the Web’s architecture. “With energy deregulation over the last few years, there’s anyway a lack of incentive for a business to build a utility since they won’t make their money back by having a monopoly on it,” says Sridhar. “The main driving factor, though, is simply that technology advances.”
'The technology Sridhar is betting on as distributed generation unfolds is his design for a solid oxide fuel cell with a proton exchange membrane, capable of generating 100 kilowatts. Each unit will be slightly less than minivan-sized, with customers buying one or many of these modular-type units, as they require.'
Current coal power can easily reach 40%+ efficiencies, with the next generation reaching near 50%. Not to mention if such technology become widespread, you will need brand new infrastructure for NG where as the current grid while needed upgrade, are already built.
Also, using it to store electricity seem absurd, battery will be a much better option.
You must be a lobbyist for the coal companies or work in coal?
No-one in their right mind would advocate the future use of coal to generate power.
Alcoa have just signed a multi billion dollar deal in Australia for using brown coal burning power generation for the next 20 yrs or so, how environmental friendly is that?????
Talk about corporate environmental awareness, they can't be that inconsiderate of future CO2 pollution from their aluminium plants .
Living in the "Hurricane hole" of New Orleans, I can't wait for a 15-17 Kw unit to replace my noisy Natural Gas standby generator. I would buy even if it isn't cost competitive with grid power. The Business Week article quotes $3000 for a home unit. There are a lot of generalities being thrown around. Someone please push this company to supply "hard" operating cost and total cost of ownership numbers.
Even this Bloom Box would require natural gas hookup or some hydro-carbon source. And no one knows its conversion efficiency after few years.
If Fuel Cells generate DC, it would make sense for Data Centers to use the DC directly instead of bothering about converting to AC. I am skeptical about its home use. Hope I am wrong.
The article says these fuel cells operate at a temperature of 600ºC instead of the room temperature hydrogen cells--that is the case when fuel is burned. This would benefit homeowners in colder climates if the excess heat could somehow be used for heating the homes.
The only reservation I would have is if the heat is not used then the efficiency would not match that of a central source. Can the efficiency of the sum of the individual distributed sources be greater than the efficiency of the larger source? Seems like there could be more opportunity for heat energy loss in distributed systems. IMO.
Even in colder climes, the summer tends to be quite warm, requiring AC. Having a hot generator near one's home is only going to increase the ambient temperature and requirement for AC. Maybe roof-mounted would help? Or underground? Of course if you have enough land to situate the generator sufficiently far from your home and your neighbors, this might not be a problem. But, in any case, I'm guessing the installation costs are not negligible.
We don't really know precisely how the 'burn' process and components work. But I was thinking the cost would not be that much if you install it into the existing heating/central air ducts in homes. You can have water as insulation so that the cell unit works like a water boiler in the summer and flush the rest of the hot air out the roof. In the winter it works both as the water boiler and heating source. This can spur an ancillary industry itself.
Power plants do recycle and reuse the heat by product until it no longer is feasible. Distributed units will not be able to recycle heat as efficiently.
Folks,
Reading the previous article quoting the CEO in an interview it's clear that individual home installations are likely never going be the case.
Because the currently installed units generate enough power for 100,000 homes, it's probable that as the cost starts to lower community coops will install and operate one unit per 100,000 homes or so. Power distribution economics alone, aside from operational economics (safety, engineering, maintenance, marketing, PR, legal, etc...), will allow these coops to out compete large scale power grids which would lower the cost across the board to the 100,000.
At this point justifying individual installations will be extremely difficult especially when necessary code requirements such as safety, maintenance, etc... are factored in to a home installation.
KWL
Folks,
Reading the previous article quoting the CEO in an interview it's clear that individual home installations are likely never going be the case.
Because the currently installed units generate enough power for 100,000 homes, it's probable that as the cost starts to lower community coops will install and operate one unit per 100,000 homes or so. Power distribution economics alone, aside from operational economics (safety, engineering, maintenance, marketing, PR, legal, etc...), will allow these coops to out compete large scale power grids which would lower the cost across the board to the 100,000.
At this point justifying individual installations will be extremely difficult especially when necessary code requirements such as safety, maintenance, etc... are factored in to a home installation.
KWL
Does anybody know the price of Bloom Energy's 100 kW generator?
Because I can go online and purchase a 100 kW natural gas generator for ~$20,000.
According to Tech Review's 2006 article on GE SOFC's, the price / kW was ~$800/kW. Which means that a 100 kW SOFC generator in 2006 was $80,000.
The SECA goal for 2010 captial costs is $700 / kW. Or $70,000 for a 100 kW generator.
Bloom Energy's generator needs to be close to $20,000 in order to be competitive with current generator technology. How can Bloom Energy compete with the cost of conventional generators?
Re: 100 kW Natural Gas Generator
The current Bloom system installed capital cost is about $7,500/KW
The cost you are claiming to be a target is off by an order of magnitude. Only an old school coal-fired gen plant would have an installed cost less than $1000/kW.
It's fine to say it's green and good but seeing as it uses hydrocarbons to generate the electricity what would the by products be and what happens to them after the generation cycle?
For more details about the emissions of the Bloom Box, look here:
http://c0688662.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/downloads_pdf_Bloomenergy_DataSheet_ES-5000.pdf
Kevin Bullis
I assume this is a solid oxide fuel cell; I wonder what the operating temperature is; startup time etc, some of many issues with the SOFC that has limited the technology. I am afraid that except for some very limited applications, fuel cells regardless of type, are one of the technologies that will be 10 years in the future for a 100 years.
If anyone wants to see a futuristic clean coal and fuel cell concept, check out the ZECA concept at http://manhaz.cyf.gov.pl/manhaz/links/COAL_BASED_NEW_TECHNOLOGIES/conceptual_design_and_econ.pdf
or google zeca and coal for a broader view. Some companies are still working on the hydrogasification part of the design.
I wonder if this thing could power an electric car? If the block he showed to Leslie Stahl could power an entire house (1KW) then you could easily fit four of them under a car hood, no? If the electric motors were in the wheel hubs and the fuel was in a normal fuel tank, I wonder how far it would drive you? What sort of MPG equivalent you would get? It pretty much blows away the inefficiency of the ICE, I'm sure!
HJ
Hi All,
I guess some of you have been reading the VC world wide press avalanche push to get their investment in front of the public. It took over NINE YEARS IN DEVELOPMENT AND $ 400 MILLION FOR DEVELOPMENT of the Bloom technology !
1. It uses precious O2 ( Oxygen) for its energy.
2. It generates CO2 as a by product as well as hydrogen.
3. Just what we need more CO2. Steam how much energy ?
4. You cannot own the fuel cell so you will need to have a maintenance contract.
5. It is limited by the type and purity of the fuel used.
6. The reliability after 5 years is questionable. Replacement cells will have light bulbs efficiency.
7. $ 800,000 thousand per unit with 100 kW possible = $ 8 kW !!!!!!
8. When the units go bad,and they will, land fills will experience toxic waste increases the likes no one has seen before.
9. Cannot operate in extreme environments.
10. Uses Natural Gas like current power plants producting electricity for pennies on the dollar ?
How is this so different to other SOFC based home systems that have been sold in Europe and Japan for a number of years now?
http://www.cfcl.com.au/Partners/
Is it their modular design or are they more efficent/cost effective?
Paul
Here is a quick interview with the ceo that touches (very) lightly on more technical aspects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVZAT3U_Jls
Sounds like alot of the work was done on the materials science side.
It's only new in a couple of ways:
1) It has a "stress tolerant" anode catalyst that can withstand fuel starvation and can auto-reform a variety of hydrocarbon fuels without coking.
2) The ceramic electrolyte is a lot tougher than most and as such is more tolerant of thermal cycling. But, said ceramic is REALLY doggone expensive. It is NOT made from ordinary playground sand, as you might have been lead to believe from Bloom's press conference the other day.
The system is costly, but prices may drop in time. As for a smaller 15K to 20K home unit, it would be ideal to take advantage of the 600F heat to co-gen your hot water, or even to convert the home to radiant heating thereby increasing the efficiency.
In colder climates, these units - if stacked in tandem like they are shown, may be a suitable heat souce for large greenhouse operations. If these fuel cells run 7X24, there is enough residual heat to collect over time that can be used for agriculture applications, mayben even use the heat source as a means to heat cold climate Bioreactors for algae farms and make additional fuel sources.
What is the gallons per hour/day/week these units produce in terms of water, or can a heat exchanger be retrofitted to act as a heat sink and bring a secondary solution to 200+F where it can be piped elsewhere to be used or stored for future cold weather applications. Perhaps a siphon can be routed to some underground storage area - like an abandoned salt mine where temps are consistent, then piped back the surface when needed.
The expelled CO2 can be fed into the greenhouse or Bioreactors too, so to some extent it's able to generate it's own Carbon Credits that can (or may) be sold on the open market through a CO2 Broker.
There are a lot of opportunities here to improve the ROI.
I was unimpressed by the 60 Minutes story last week, but I am truly disappointed by this MIT Tech Review Article.
I was hoping for more technical details, especially with an article of this length. Perhaps the editors should have aimed more for a To Market communication like the one that was recently published for Horizon Fuel Cells.
Some answers I would have liked to have at least see mentioned in this article are:
• How Bloom is different from Fuel Cell Energy, Westinghouse SOFCs, or even the Australian ceramic fuel cells TaffyDownUnder just mentioned?
• What manufacturing plans does Bloom have in store? To have an impact, which I do hope this technology does, they will need a plan to move beyond one unit per day.
• What variety of fuels can the Bloom Box accept? So far, I've only heard about natural gas. Can it tolerate fuels containing high amounts of sulfur? What about other contaminants?
And I was truly shocked to read the blurb about using the Bloom Box as energy storage device without any inquiry or commentary from the article's author about how this would be possible using a solid-oxide fuel cell. SOFCs only conduct ions at temperatures well above the boiling point of water.
• Are there advantages to running an electrolysis cell at such high temperatures?
• How is this better than PEM or alkaline based electrolyzers that are available today (not 10 years from now)?
• Or, if hydrogen production from water is not the storage that is envisioned, than what is?
I am often quite pleased with the technical details of MIT Tech Review articles, but unfortunately not this time. More Tech, please, and less marketing next time.
As to your question about sulfur...well, yes and no.
Yes, the Bloom cells can handle more sulfur than most systems, but it is not immune to sulfur poisoning of the anode catalyst. So, in order to handle high sulfur fuels, the system would need a desulfurizing system (such as a Fe/ZnO/SiO2 regenerative desulfurizer). Such a desulfurizing system is not cheap, and represents yet another parasitic load to have to waste energy in running. The only good news is that you could use some of the fc stack waste heat to provide thermal energy to periodically regenerate the desulfurizer catalyst.
This technology is about innovative material science but need to optimize process and material further to be competitive in finantial terms. I believe it could be working also with bio diesel for example and make oil service to gas conversion. As our research project in biofuels area it will be an interesting breaktrough in different indutrial processes, http://www.liveflowenergy.com
Fuel cells have a great future in some situations. They deal well with methanol as a fuel (as opposed to automobiles).
Solid oxide is a tough way to go though because of the large waste heat.
Disruptive to Bloom and others
I know for a fact a plasma physicist is working on new technology that will give a Q>>>>>1.
When I mentioned the Bloom box he read as much about it as he could find.
He came back and said he will obsolete their technology in days of his product introduction.
Looks like the down spiral of VC investments continues its path.
Hyped marketing or not.
Re: Disruptive to Bloom and others
OK, where is it? When will it be viable and on the shelf? I know a lot of people have THE GREAT IDEA but it never goes to market.
I believe that in Silicon Valley there is a HUGE landfill under what is now the area near/around the Shoreline Amphitheater. So, I think the Silicon Valley companies referenced could get access to landfill methane.
CBS "60 Minutes" assigned Lesley Stahl to cover this story. Along the way, she asked whether the "box" can use solar power. The CEO replied "yes" in no uncertain terms. If Ms Stahl were not a scientific illiterate, she would have followed up on the fact that solar energy collectors don't look at all like fuel cells. I've asked Bloom to resolve this apparent discrepancy, and they tap-danced around the question. The Bloom Box is a hoax. It's not the first. Look up "Keeley Energy hoax", "cold fusion", and the "Newman Energy Machine".
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Gaetano Marano
246 Comments
>>> it seems ideal as storage system for solar and wind energy power plants >>>
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low cost, cheap materials and reverse mode...
it seems ideal as storage system for solar and wind energy power plants...
like my "Wind Energy Skyscrapers" idea...
http://ow.ly/OYST
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