Fuel cells have never generated anywhere hear as much hype as that humming around the official launch of the Bloom Energy Server in Silicon Valley last week.
Billed as mini power stations, these generators use a patented solid oxide fuel cell which its inventor Bloom Energy Corporation claims provides a cleaner, more reliable, and more affordable power source than either energy from the grid or from traditional renewable energy sources.
Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100 kilowatts, enough electricity for approximately 100 average homes or a small office building, from a box with a footprint the size of a parking space. For more power, customers install multiple servers side by side. Bloom says there is a 3-5 year payback on the capital investment from the energy cost savings. In addition, users can also achieve a 40 – 100 per cent reduction in their carbon footprint as compared to getting their electricity from the US grid.
K R Sridhar, a former NASA scientist, who is the co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, said the technology will have the same kind of impact on energy that the mobile phone had on communications. “Just as cell phones circumvented landlines to proliferate telephony, Bloom Energy will enable the adoption of distributed power as a smarter, localised energy source.”
The Bloom Energy Server can convert air and nearly any fuel source – ranging from natural gas to a wide range of biogases – into electricity via an electrochemical process, rather than combustion. The company says that even running on a fossil fuel, the systems are approximately 67 per cent cleaner than a typical coal-fired power plant. When powered by a renewable fuel, they can be 100 per cent cleaner.
The first commercial system was installed at Google’s headquarters in July 2008. Other customers whose names were announced at the launch include Bank of America,
the Coca-Cola Company, eBay, FedEx, and Walmart. Bloom said the Energy Servers installed to date have collectively produced more than 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity, with CO2 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds – the equivalent of powering approximately 1,000 American homes for a year and planting one million trees.
Not content with breakthrough technology and the blue chip customers, the launch of the Bloom Energy Server, at eBay’s headquarters, was attended by the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and former US Secretary of State, General Colin Powell. Reports from the launch say it was standing room only for the press and the Internet is buzzing with news of the device.
Cleantech has never been so cool. Let’s hope these servers really can do all that is claimed for them, and they are as good at generating electricity as the Bloom Energy Corporation is at generating hype.