TheEEStory.com

This is fairly interesting. Looks like Bloom Energy has a contract with Ebay for it's fuel cell technology.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/...

Bloom’s Web site offers no information about the company. CNN Money in 2007 placed Bloom on its list of 15 companies that will change the world, and it said Bloom’s fuel cell could disrupt the idea that power has to come from central power plants. Sridhar’s plan calls for making fuel cells that can run on any hydrocarbon fuel, including ethanol, biodiesel, methane or natural gas.

The cells, though, don’t require combustion and produce only half the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional energy.

---

eestorblog wrote:

This is fairly interesting. Looks like Bloom Energy has a contract with Ebay for it's fuel cell technology.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/...

Bloom’s Web site offers no information about the company. CNN Money in 2007 placed Bloom on its list of 15 companies that will change the world, and it said Bloom’s fuel cell could disrupt the idea that power has to come from central power plants. Sridhar’s plan calls for making fuel cells that can run on any hydrocarbon fuel, including ethanol, biodiesel, methane or natural gas.

The cells, though, don’t require combustion and produce only half the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional energy.

Bloom Energy may change the world, but so far there are many unanswered questions. Cost? Durability? Etc. Bloom does have deep-pocketed investors, tho.

I just like the idea of having a natural gas electricity generator that could beat the price of my provider.

We have quite a few power outages in the washington dc area....oddly enough. Tons of trees an storms wreak havoc every year. I looked into buying a natural gas generator awhile back but it wasn't economical. If Bloom has some sort of magic bullet in this regard, I'd probably be one of their first consumer customers.

But if they are working with Ebay...looks like they would be going with major business customers first...which only makes sense.

---

Bloom Energy is indeed quite interesting and AGAIN we are talking about a Kleiner Perkins backed company.

Great synergy with Eestor. Just look at what Bloom Energy Chief Executive Shridar told eart2tech last week:

-------

Bloom is targeting the transportation industry in the company’s grand vision.

No the fuel cell won’t be making its way into the vehicles themselves but Sridhar tells van Diggelen that “the ultimate vision” is to have refrigerator-sized Bloom devices powering transportation within a decade. As Sridhar explains: “Our device can either produce the electricity that will charge the car or provide you hydrogen if the transportation becomes a hydrogen based. So we’ve sort of become the gas station for the transportation industry.” That sounds like the devices could provide an off-the-grid form of electric vehicle charging.

-------

Hand in glove with the EESU if you ask me.

Full interview: http://earth2tech.com/2009/10/08/bloom-energy-c...

---

We've mostly guessed that rapid filling stations would be near substations due to electrical needs. With this, a gas pipeline or bottled gas could feed large EESUs that charged the vehicles.

For individual homes, and most applications, pairing the fuel cell unit with an EESU allows you to lower the cost of the fuel cell by buying a smaller unit. The EESU gets charged when you are not drawing power for work, but is ready when you rev up the lights, A/C, washer and computers. This draws down your EESU reserve, which is replenished steadily by the fuel cell, which runs all the time.

I am assuming they are best run without cycling on and off; anyone know?

OMG,OMG,OMG, they've gotta' be a scam!

Their web site: http://www.bloomenergy.com/ only has a home page.
Only being used as a point for email!
(Same as EEStor, just EEStor didn't bother with as much as the home page!)

.

On the more serious note, I wouldn't think the utility industry would NOT* take kindly to having bona fide competitors. Think it likely they would want to pressure EEStor so they (utilities) could "corner" EESUs for the grid leveling application? Something that KPCB would be diametrically opposed to, for the sake of Bloom Energy and any other such investments.

.

As to Bloom themselves - fuel cells.
You don't meann to tell me some bright soles figured out how to make a long lasting, economcial fuel cell powered by raw hydrocarbons, do you?

One bugaboo there has been the need for a reformer to "crack" the hydrocarbons down to H₂ and CO as fuel, and CO₂ as waste. Which can be done natively (self-dissociation of hydrocarbons without a reformer component), if the temperature is *very* high - 1000°C or so. But those SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cells) suffer issues such as longevity, high priced ingredients such as platinum, poisoning by sulphur and mechanical / sealing issues.

Solving those issues would bypass all those nasty thermodynamic cycles (steam, Carnot, Rankine, ... ) that limit efficiency.

EDITED, as per WalksOnDirt

Last edited Mon, 19 Oct 2009, 1:49pm by nekote

---

nekote wrote:

... high priced rare earth's such as platinum ...

Platinum is not a rare earth element. It's a noble metal (among other things).

Last edited Mon, 19 Oct 2009, 1:42pm by WalksOnDirt

---

eeinterested wrote:

For individual homes, and most applications, pairing the fuel cell unit with an EESU allows you to lower the cost of the fuel cell by buying a smaller unit. The EESU gets charged when you are not drawing power for work, but is ready when you rev up the lights, A/C, washer and computers. This draws down your EESU reserve, which is replenished steadily by the fuel cell, which runs all the time.

I am assuming they are best run without cycling on and off; anyone know?

Those sound really great IF one has a fuel source to run it. Since there is no natural gas here, I would rather use the inexpensive thin-film solar cells on my roof. As soon as Nanosolar (and they said soon) has them for residential, I will be able to have a 7KW system for around $5000 out of pocket which I will use to charge my ALL Electric Car. :)

---