Will Bloom Boxes Make Your Electric Utility Obsolete?
An interesting article in the December 2009 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Who Needs the Grid, reports on an old technology newly adapted to produce electricity cleanly and inexpensively: fuel cells. Bloom Energy has a power producing device -- called a Bloom box and about the size of a coffee table -- capable of powering a 5,000 square foot house. The article, by Lane Wallace, reports that a five-kilowatt Bloom box has been used in an ongoing trial at the University of Tennessee, and,
has proved twice as efficient as a traditional gas-burning system and produced 60 percent fewer emissions.
Some of the article highlights are:
- The Bloom box has been in development for eight years with the support of a reported $250 million in venture capital.
- It is "fuel agnostic," meaning the boxes can be run on existing propane, natural gas, or ethanol sources, but can also be run on plant waste (biomass) or almost anything containing hyrdogen and carbon.
- The boxes operate independent of the power grid, critical for developing countries lacking infrastructure -- and nice for any consumer that wants to be free of its utility.
What Does It Mean? One thing it means is that your local generating and distribution utility better get good at innovation. If the ideas the utilities have expressed in the Arkansas PSC dockets on Sustainable Energy Resources, Ratemaking, and Energy Efficiency are any indication, they will be obsolete before they know it.
UPDATES:
Bloom Energy to Unveil Bloom Boxes Wednesday
Bloom Boxes Could Promote Economic Development in Arkansas
Bloom Boxes Unveiled by Bloomenergy
LOVE this idea! Saw it covered on 60 Minutes 2-21-10. So glad that this innovation is independent of the grid, which would need $$$$ to upgrade to Japanese level of function.
Just one question: If everyone has a bloom box in the back yard and all businesses have large bloom boxes and those boxes will be using oxygen to make power, will we not then have a shift in the chemical composition of the air in heavily populated areas? Will be all be breathing a lot more in and out, trying to suck in enough O2? Will our brain power drop as the O2 level does?
mzrecycle - I assume your comment is rhetorical. Regardless of where the energy is generated, in your garage bloom box or at your local coal powered fuel station, oxygen is going to be consumed. If - as touted - the bloom device is more efficient than other "oxygen consuming" power generation technologies then the oxygen use will be lowered. And yes, I know nuclear power, solar power, wind power, wave power, geothermal, .... don't, post construction, consume oxygen.
If using natural gas as a fuel is there combustion or burning that generates co2?
Existing fuel,(LP, Natural Gas) What kind of consumption rate are we looking at for, lets say a 5000 sq ft home for one month???
great invention but,may increase globel warming.
Your concerns are valid, but not scientific. Power sources
"consume" Oxygen. Fireplaces, Heaters, and Cars all use
Oxygen, but do not remove it from our overall ecosystem. Such Appliances "use" oxygen, but give it off as CO, CO2, or water vapor (hydrogen & oxygen). Green plants on land, & plankton in the ocean breathe in the CO (carbon diOxide) and recycle it back into the air as O2 (oxygen). Life on earth would not exist without plants and plankton which recycle about 90% of the Oxygen we breathe. Get this, Coal, Gas,& Oil powered Power Plants use more O2 and put out more exhaust fumes. I would say the Bloom generator is the more "green" of the power generators.