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The Bloom Box. Router size Fuel Cell to Power your home

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:43 pm
by Noel
K.R. Sridhar the founder of Bloom Energy is a genius.

Two fuel cell blocks that you can hold in each hand will be able to power the typical American home.
Big business (Google, Walmart, Ebay, FedEx, etc.) are using them already.

The 60 minutes clip is worth a watch. Will you buy one?

60 Minutes Interview: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n

More info: http://www.garrygolden.net/2010/02/23/b ... ed-energy/
And more: http://www.garrygolden.net/2010/02/21/f ... uel-cells/

Bloom Energy Home Page: http://www.bloomenergy.com/

Re: The Bloom Box. Router size Fuel Cell to Power your home

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:56 pm
by j.hoekstra
As I see it, it's an organic fuel cell design which if he can produce in large-scale would be brilliant. I think however that in a not too long time he will be bought out and GE will use it's power to take it over.
I only watched the short film, but the main thing seems to be he won't be easily able to scale up his production(1 Box a day, where there's 4 needed for a Google datacentre) isn't much. He'll have to produce way more to break trough, GE has that ability.

On the tech-side: It's great, just hope he won't beheld back by patents of competitors(US-patents are pretty weak and favor big coorporations, quite the opposite of the intention when introducing them) and that he will be able to make them cheap and en-masse. Like all fuel-cells it depends on what you feed them with how green it is and it being a gaspowered fuel cell means you'd still be dependant on a container for gas or the gas-company.

Re: The Bloom Box. Router size Fuel Cell to Power your home

Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 11:50 am
by drmacchi
That's the problem : to depend from methan gas. So it's always the same : methan distribution, extraction from heart, big companies , sometimes wars for gas........... it's better the fuel cell with hydrogen and oxigen but their energy production is low. I only found on the street market a fuel cell to recharge cell-phones (1watt) :( :(