Bloom Energy

sonnenenergie

On 24 February 2010, Sridhar told Todd Woody of The New York Times that his devices are making electricity for 8–10 cents/kWh using natural gas, which is cheaper than today's electricity prices in some parts of the United States, such as California. Twenty percent of the Bloom Energy Server cost savings depend upon avoiding transfer losses that result from energy grid use.

Bloom Energy is developing Power Purchase Agreements to sell the electricity produced by the boxes, rather than sell the boxes themselves, in order to address customers' fears about box maintenance, reliability and servicing costs.

Fifteen percent of the power at eBay is created with Bloom technology; after tax incentives that paid half the cost eBay expects "a three-year payback period" for the remaining half, based on California's $0.14/kWh cost of commercial electricity.

dr dodge

how do these two statements work? If 20% of the efficiency comes from not using the grid, then how do you sell the power, other that "rent a bloom" and pay the energy costs + their rent on the unit?

That then puts the household consumer out of the loop, or gets you caught in a monopoly of "I unhooked from the grid, and use a bloom box, so must pay what they say" instead of outright purchase.

Based upon the fact that they want to only "rent" them, now I have to wonder what realistic life cycle and repair costs would be after 3-5 years. The real advantage in ICE's is that in all reality they can be overhauled numerous times for significantly less cost than replacing them (assuming the thing was properly maintained)

dr

russ_watters

...not including the depreciation of the Bloom Box itself, of course.

mheslep

How do you know that there's any advantage over the Bloom Box? That is, why couldn't the BB be similarly overhauled if need be?

Topher925

I question this as well. Since on average the grid is about 93% efficient at delivering electricity the above statement makes no sense to me either.

FCs actually have the advantage when it comes to overhaul. FCs themselves are much simpler and easier to service than a comparable ICE and the systems are almost always modular. They are also a lot more fun to take apart since you don't get covered in oil and muck.

Jon Richfield

Right. And some of the guys are talking of "orders of magnitude" greater efficiency. As a general rule the term is used to mean factors of 10. Even a fairly trashy internal combustion engine would reach 100% in far less than one order of magnitude improvement, even without exploiting waste heat. I am all in favour of improving fuel efficiency, and FCs seem particularly good options in theory, but let's keep things in perspective, hm?
Cheers,
Jon

dr dodge

if the exhaust were "conditioned" it would be very easy to seperate the water and co2, and then the co2 could be captured, compressed and stored. Later on the co2 could be used for a multitude of things, or if cap and trade happens, could be used as a "currency" of carbon tax. My real concern, is as with any idea that seems too good to be true, and is all in the control of a few individuals, how stable is the long term costs.
If its construction was public knowledge, competition eventually drives costs down, but in monopoly situations, any savings can potentially vaporize if the rental costs are un controlled.

I am pleasently optimistic, but have seen the fuel cell idea go around for darn'd near 20 years and still don't see them used much, and their costs have remained high

dr

mheslep

You are referring to a combustion engine?


Coming up on 200 years.

Topher925

I believe he is referring to a fuel cell as CO2 sequestration from an ICE is much more difficult than something like a SOFC.


The ICE engine was invented about 203 years ago and is still rather inefficient by today's standards.

dr dodge

I was indeed talking about the fuel cell. It would be real nice to hook up a box to the nat. gas line and get power for pennies on the dollar, and use the CO2 to keep the keg from going flat,but....

it just ain't happenin'.....

my 20 years was in reference to the fuel cell being the solution for 20 years that just has not produced the results that were promised.

I thought I read that Calif metro was dumping most of the H2 buses because they didn't live up to the expected results

dr

mheslep

Edit: PEM fuel cells don't emit CO2. They emit H20. If a reformer is used in addition to the fuel cell, for methane fuels as in the Bloom Box, then either CO or CO2 will be produced.
http://www.fz-juelich.de/ief/ief-3/f...gas_reforming/

dr dodge

wouldn't the fuel cell produce both water and co2 if it was run on natural gas?
thats the only way (in my opinion) that it will work on a large scale

it costs too much, and makes way more pollution to make hydrogen from the natural gas
then an added infra structure is also needed

dr

Topher925

That is correct. You can reform NG to decarbonize the fuel but it makes absolutely no sense to do so. Normally, you would just pipe the NG directly into the SOFC. If for what ever reason you do produce CO, you would just re-feed it back to the cathode since CO can be used as a fuel as well.

The products from a NG fueled SOFC will be H2O and CO2 and nothing else (well, nothing in measurable quantities).

mheslep

Ah, Topher's ~right. I was focused on hydrogen fueled PEM fuel cells in which the reformer, if used, is a separate system. SOFC's like Bloom's directly process light hydrocarbons because the anode has two roles: i) oxidization of hydrogen using oxygen ions diffusing through the stack, and also ii) catalytic reforming of light hydrocarbons into hydrogen, i.e. a catalytic reformer is intrinsic to an SOFC.

robert_13

In this interview with the inventor, K.R. Sridhar, he says there is no need for a reformer in his fuel cell. He does a crystal clear job of answering many of the issues brought up here. It can apparently also run on pure hydrogen. The interview is on youtube at the following address:

youtube.com/watch?v=uVZAT3U_Jls&feature=player_embedded

mheslep

I've seen it. Sridhar says there is no need for an *external* reformer. When the fuel is methane, he states that internal to the device "methane and water react" to form syngas, which is called methane reforming.