A breakthrough in Energy Production

[Halaku Khan]

Bloom Box: What is it and how does it work?
A '60 Minutes' Bloom Box segment has many excited about the home power plant. Is it too good to be true?

By Husna Haq Correspondent
posted February 22, 2010 at 12:09 pm EST

It’s being hailed as the Holy Grail of clean energy: a refrigerator-sized personal power plant that produces energy cheaply and cleanly and may one day replace the traditional power grid. Its inventor wants to put one in every home by 2020.

Bloom Box is the creation of Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale, California-based company that is promising to revolutionize energy with its “power plant in a box.” K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, gave Americans their first peek at the new device Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes. On Wednesday, Mr. Sridhar will make a major public announcement in Silicon Valley unveiling Bloom Box.

So what is Bloom Box?

It’s a collection of fuel cells – skinny batteries – that use oxygen and fuel to create electricity with no emissions.

Fuel cells are the building blocks of the Bloom Box. They’re made of sand that is baked into diskette-sized ceramic squares and painted with green and black ink. Each fuel cell has the potential to power one light bulb. The fuel cells are stacked into brick-sized towers sandwiched with metal alloy plates.

The fuel cell stacks are housed in a refrigerator-sized unit – the Bloom Box. Oxygen is drawn into one side of the unit, and fuel (fossil-fuel, bio-fuel, or even solar power can be used) is fed into the other side. The two combine within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy with no burning, no combustion, and no power lines.

About 64 stacks of fuel cells could power a small business like a Starbucks franchise, according to Sridhar’s 60 Minutes interview.

Working with an investment of around $400 million, aerospace engineer K.R. Sridhar spent close to a decade inventing the Bloom Box. It grew, he explained to 60 Minutes, from a device he originally invented to produce oxygen on Mars. When NASA scrapped the Mars mission, Sridhar reversed his Mars machine, pumping oxygen in, instead of making oxygen, he said.

Sridhar already has some 20 well-known customers, including Google, FedEx, Walmart, Staples, and Ebay. The corporate boxes cost about $700,000 to $800,000.

Ebay installed five Bloom Boxes nine months ago, and they fuel about 15 percent of its San Jose campus, said CEO John Donahoe in the 60 Minutes interview. “It’s been very successful thus far,” Mr. Donahoe says, adding that the company has saved $100,000 in electricity costs already.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is also on Bloom Energy’s board of directors.

But the Bloom Box isn’t without skeptics.

Michael Kanellos, editor of Greentech Media, which covers the clean energy market, says Bloom Energy isn’t the first company to claim it has invented a clean energy fuel cell. Cost is always a concern with fuel cells, as is round-the-clock, 24-7 functionality. Bloom Energy still has to figure out how to mass-produce the unit and get its costs down low enough to outfit every home with a Bloom Box, Mr. Kanellos said on 60 Minutes.

Sridhar says he eventually wants to get costs down to $2,000 per box.

Bloom Energy has also been cryptically silent about its new device. As of Monday, its puzzling website has no information about the Bloom Box, and the company has not replied to multiple requests for interviews.

Still, Sridhar has ambitious goals for his Bloom Box, planning not only to place it in every American home in 10 years, but also in homes in Africa, India, and China. He’d like to start, he says, with America’s first family.

“I want a Bloom Box next to the [White House] organic vegetable garden,” he says on 60 Minutes. “It’s about seeing the world as what it can be.”

Bloom Box: What is it and how does it work? / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

 

[Halaku Khan]

The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?
60 Minutes: First Customers Says Energy Machine Works And Saves Money

The Bloom Box
Large corporations have been testing a new device that can generate power on the spot, without being connected to the electric grid. Will we have one in every home someday? Lesley Stahl reports.

Bloom Energy's K.R. Sridhar, holding up fuel cells that are key components of the so-called "Bloom box." (CBS)

(CBS) In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.

You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.

It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive - until now.

K.R. Sridhar invited "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl for a first look at the innards of the Bloom box that he has been toiling on for nearly a decade.

Looking at one of the boxes, Sridhar told Stahl it could power an average U.S. home.

"The way we make it is in two blocks. This is a European home. The two put together is a U.S. home," he explained.

"'Cause we use twice as much energy, is that what you're saying?" Stahl asked.

"Yeah, and this'll power four Asian homes," he replied.

"So four homes in India, your native country?" Stahl asked.

"Four to six homes in our country," Sridhar replied.

"It sounds awfully dazzling," Stahl remarked.

"It is real. It works," he replied.

He says he knows it works because he originally invented a similar device for NASA. He really is a rocket scientist.

"This invention, working on Mars, would have allowed the NASA administrator to pick up a phone and say, 'Mr. President, we know how to produce oxygen on Mars,'" Sridhar told Stahl.

"So this was going to produce oxygen so people could actually live on Mars?" she asked.

"Absolutely," Sridhar replied.

When NASA scrapped that Mars mission, Sridhar had an idea: he reversed his Mars machine. Instead of it making oxygen, he pumped oxygen in.

He invented a new kind of fuel cell, which is like a very skinny battery that always runs. Sridhar feeds oxygen to it on one side, and fuel on the other. The two combine within the cell to create a chemical reaction that produces electricity. There's no need for burning or combustion, and no need for power lines from an outside source.

In October 2001 he managed to get a meeting with John Doerr from the big Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

"How much do you think, 'I need to come up with the next big thing'?" Stahl asked Doerr.

"Oh, that's my job," he replied. "To find entrepreneurs who are going to change the world and then help them."

Doerr has certainly changed our world: he's the one who discovered and funded Netscape, Amazon and Google. When he listened to Sridhar, the idea seemed just as transformative: efficient, inexpensive, clean energy out of a box.

"But Google: $25 million. This man said, 'How much money?'" Stahl asked.

"At the time he said over a hundred million dollars," Doerr replied.

But according to Doerr that was okay.

"So nothing he said scared you?" Stahl asked.

"Oh, I wasn't at all sure it could be done," he replied.

But there was a selling point: clean energy was an emerging market, worth gazillions.

"I like to say that the new energy technologies could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," Doerr explained.

He told Stahl it was the firm's first clean energy investment.

Many followed, and the clean tech revolution in Silicon Valley was off and running with start-ups that produce thin flexible solar panels, harness wind with giant balloons, or develop new fuels from algae.

But Bloom is among the most expensive. "I heard actually so far, not just from Kleiner Perkins, but total $400 million," Stahl remarked.

"You're in the ballpark," Sridhar acknowledged.

With that kind of money comes a lot of buzz. "In Silicon Valley, every time a company raises over $100 million, and they haven't come out with a product yet, everybody starts getting the heebie-jeebies," Michael Kanellos, editor-in-chief of the Web site GreenTech Media, told Stahl.

Kanellos admitted he is skeptical. "I'm hopeful but I'm skeptical. 'Cause people have tried fuel cells since the 1830s," he explained. "And they're great ideas, right? You just need producing energy at an instant. But they're not easy. They're like the divas of industrial equipment. You have to put platinum inside there. You've got zirconium. The little plates inside have to work not just for an hour or a day, but they have to work for 30 years, nonstop. And then the box has to be cheap to make."

One thing stoking his skepticism: Sridhar has been hyper-secretive - there's no sign on his building, a cryptic Web site, and no public progress reports.

Given the stealthiness, we were surprised when Sridhar showed us - for the very first time - how he makes the "secret sauce" of his fuel cell on the cheap.

He said he bakes sand and cuts it into little squares that are turned into a ceramic. Then he coats it with green and black "inks" that he developed.

Sridhar told Stahl there is a secret formula. "And you take that and you apply that. You paint that on either side of this white ceramic to get a green layer and a black layer. And…that's it."

Sridhar told Stahl the finished product, a skinny fuel cell, would generate power.

One disk powers one light bulb; the taller the stack of disks, the more power it generates. In between each disk there's a metal plate, but instead of platinum, Sridhar uses a cheap metal alloy.

The stacks are the heart of the Bloom box: put 64 of them together and you get something big enough to power a Starbucks.

Sridhar offered to give Stahl a sneak peek inside the Bloom box.

"All those modules that we saw go into this big box. Fuel goes in, air goes in, out comes electricity," he explained.

Asked if Bloom box is intended to get rid of the grid, John Doerr told Stahl, "The Bloom box is intended to replace the grid…for its customers. It's cheaper than the grid, it's cleaner than the grid."

"Now, won't the utility companies see this as a threat and try to crush Bloom?" Stahl asked.

"No, I think the utility companies will see this as a solution," Doerr said. "All they need to do is buy Bloom boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity and operate."

"They'll buy these boxes?" Stahl asked.

"They buy nuclear power plants. They buy gas turbines from General Electric," he pointed out.

To make power, you'd still need fuel. Many past fuel cells failed because they needed expensive pure hydrogen. Not this box.

"Our system can use fossil fuels like natural gas. Our system can use renewable fuels like landfill gas, bio-gas," Sridhar told Stahl. "We can use solar."

"You know, it's very difficult for us to come in here and make an evaluation. How are we supposed to know whether what you're saying is true?" Stahl asked.

"Why don't we talk to our first customers?" he replied.

Yes, he already has customers. Twenty large, well-known companies have quietly bought and are testing Bloom boxes in California.

Like FedEx. We were at their hub in Oakland, the day Bloom installed their boxes, each one costing $700-800,000.

One reason the companies have signed up is that in California 20 percent of the cost is subsidized by the state, and there's a 30 percent federal tax break because it's a "green" technology. In other words: the price is cut in half.

"We have FedEx, we have Walmart," Sridhar explained.

He told Stahl the first customer was Google.

Four units have been powering a Google datacenter for 18 months. They use natural gas, but half as much as would be required for a traditional power plant.

Sridhar told Stahl that three weeks in at Google, suddenly one of the boxes just stopped.

Asked if he panicked, he told Stahl, "For a short while… yes."

He fixed that; then there was another incident. "The air filters clog up and air is not coming into the system because the highway is kicking dirt. You just flip the system around, and the problem is gone," he explained.

Another company that has bought and is testing the Bloom box so Sridhar can work out the kinks is eBay. Its boxes are on the lawn in the middle of its campus in San Jose.

John Donahoe, eBay's CEO, says its five boxes were installed nine months ago and have already saved the company more than $100,000 in electricity costs.

"It's been very successful thus far. They've done what they said they would do," he told Stahl.

eBay's boxes run on bio-gas made from landfill waste, so they're carbon neutral. Donahoe took us up to the roof to show off the company's more than 3,000 solar panels. But they generate a lot less electricity than the boxes on the lawn.

"So this, on five buildings, acres and acres and acres," Stahl remarked.

"Yes. The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient," Donahoe said. "When you average it over seven days a week, 24 hours a day, the Bloom box puts out five times as much power that we can actually use."

But not everyone is convinced that even if the technology works, Bloom - that now makes one box a day - will ever be able to be as big as its backers say.

"Going from a few to mass-manufacturing's going to be tough. And then making them so people won't run away at the price tag. It needs to be cheaper than solar. It needs to be cheaper than wind," GreenTech Media's Michael Kanellos told Stahl.

"What if he can get the price way down? He claims he can," she asked.

"And if he can, the problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates probably can do the same thing. They have fuel cell patents; they have research teams that have looked at this," Kanellos replied.

"What do you think the chances are that in ten-plus years you and I will each have a Bloom box in our basements?" Stahl asked.

"Twenty percent," Kanellos replied. "But it’s going to say 'G.E.'"

"Companies that you have bet on, they haven't all succeeded?" Stahl asked John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins.

"I have some famous failures," he acknowledged.

Doerr is praying that Bloom is not the next Segway, as he and Sridhar get ready for the company's official launch this Wednesday. They're pulling out all the stops, including high profile endorsements.

"I have seen the technology and it works," former Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

He joined Bloom's board of directors last year.

Asked if this is the answer to our energy problems, Powell told Stahl, "I think that's too big a claim to make. I think it is part of the transformation of the energy system. But I think the Bloom boxes will make a significant contribution."

To make a contribution, in Sridhar's mind, Bloom boxes will power not just our richest companies, but remote villages in Africa and all our houses.

"In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home," he told Stahl.

He said a unit should cost an average person less than $3,000.

"You are an idealist," Stahl remarked.

"You know, it's about seeing the world as what it can be and not what it is," Sridhar replied.

"I see you seeing a Bloom box in the basement of the White House," she said.

"Absolutely. I would love that to go on the lawn," he replied.

"So, forget…the basement. You want the Bloom box in the Rose Garden?" Stahl asked.

"Maybe next to that organic vegetable garden," Sridhar joked. "I would be happy with that."

 

[Halaku Khan]

KR Sridhar
Bloom Energy

KR Sridhar is the principal co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy. Prior to founding the company, Dr. Sridhar was a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona. Under his leadership, STL won over $20 million in nationally competed R&D contracts.

Dr. Sridhar has successfully assembled and led major project teams consisting of strategic consortia of industry, academia, and national labs, and has served as an advisor to NASA. Among his significant projects, Dr. Sridhar helped develop strategic plans for the space agency in the areas of nanotechnology and planetary missions. His work on NASA payloads to Mars which were designed to convert Martian atmospheric gases to oxygen for use in propulsion and life support were recognized by Fortune Magazine, where he was cited as one of the top five futurists that are inventing tomorrow, today.

Dr. Sridhar has served on many technical committees, panels and Advisory Boards. He has over fifty publications, and has performed pioneering work in the areas of Space Technology, Microsensors and Devices, Multiphase Flow, and Solid Oxide Electrolysis and Systems, the last of which is the basis of the technology being used at Bloom Energy.

Dr. Sridhar received his Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from the University of Madras, India, as well as his M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Sridhar enjoys interacting with K-12 children and inspiring them to learn math and science. He lives in Los Gatos, California with his wife and two children.

Related Links: Bloom Energy | Be the solution

Last Updated: Fri, Oct 31, 2008

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?author=236

 

[Cynic Waheed]

hmmm interesting!!

 

[Peshwa]

WASHINGTON: The world of energy and entrepreneurship is crackling with electric anticipation this week after an India-born scientist-CEO provided a sneak peek over the weekend at a clean and efficient model of power generation-in-a-box that could eliminate the traditional grid and challenge monopolies.

Supporters are claiming K.R.Sridhar’s ''Bloom box,'' scheduled for a big-splash unveiling in Silivon Valley on Wednesday, could be the Holy Grail of the world’s energy quest; and even skeptics agree that it is a unique ''power-plant-in-a-box.'' What acres of power grid can generate, Sridhar’s Bloom Box can crank out in a fraction of the footprint -- in a squeaky clean manner too.

It is already being done -- on the campuses of Google and eBay among others. FedEx, Wal-Mart and Staples are among a score of Fortune 100 companies that have signed up as clients. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, among those who endorse the technology, is on the Board of Directors of Sridhar’s Bloom Energy, an eight-year old stealth start-up that raised more than $ 400 million from Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists at a time the region’s economy was in a tail-spin.

At its heart, Sridhar’s Bloom Box claims to be a game-changing fuel cell device that consists of a stack of ceramic disks coated with secret green and black "inks." The disks are separated by cheap metal plates. Stacking the ceramic disks into a bread loaf-sized unit, says Sridhar, can produce one kilowatt of electricity, enough to power an American home – or four Indian homes. \

The unit can be scaled up, installed anywhere, and be connected to an electrical grid just like you would connect your PC to the Internet. Hydrocarbons such as natural gas or biofuel (stored separately) are pumped into the Bloom Box to produce clean, scaled-up, and reliable electricity. The company says the unit does not vibrate, emits no sound, and has no smell, although Sridhar admits to some initial, but minor, glitches at some installations.

A hoax it is not, although some are suggesting there is a lot of hype around the launch -- somewhat like with that of the Segway transporter that was much bally-hooed but did not live up to its billing. As with Segway, the big catch right now is cost. Large-sized Bloom Boxes of the kind installed at some Silicon Valley campuses costs around $ 700,000 to $ 800,000. Sridhar estimates that a Bloom Box for the residential market could be out within a decade for as little as $3,000 to produce electricity 24/7/365. "In five to ten years, we would like to be in every home," Sridhar told CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday night.

But Silicon Valley, whose major venture capitalist Kleiner Perkins’ bankrolled Bloom Energy, is endorsing the technology. EBay said it has already saved $100,000 in electricity costs since its 5 boxes were installed nine months ago. It even claims that the Bloom boxes generate more power than the 3,000 solar panels at its headquarters. Google has a 400 kilowatt installation from Bloom at its Mountain View headquarters. California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at the launch, which is to take place on the eBay campus.

The man at the center of all the excitement is Dr K.R. Sridhar, 49, who, prior to founding Bloom Energy, was a professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona. He is also, literally, a rocket scientist, having served as an advisor to NASA in the areas of nanotechnology and planetary missions. Sridhar initially developed the idea behind the Bloom Box while working with NASA, as a means of producing oxygen for astronauts landing on Mars.

Dr. Sridhar received his Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Madras, India, and moved to in the 1980s to the U.S, where he earned an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, home to such start ups as Netscape. On Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes homed in on Sridhar’s breakthrough technology, bringing huge attention to Bloom Energy’s bare-bones website that ran a cryptic visual saying ''Be the Solution'' -- and a clock counting down to Wednesday’s launch.

NRI readies power plant in a box - India - The Times of India

A neutral source for the skeptics......

The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough? - 60 Minutes - CBS News

I must say....this is simply amazing!!!!

If the power generation of this compact device is as much as being claimed...it could be GIANT step towards the elimination of dependency on Oil and Gas as energy sources........

 

[Peshwa]

Double Post

 

[Chanakyaa]

i did my project of fuel cells during my engineering.
FCs are indeed Future.

Imagine Putting ONLY water in ur Inverter battery which lasts for a life time.

 

[Peshwa]

i did my project of fuel cells during my engineering.
FCs are indeed Future.

Imagine Putting ONLY water in ur Inverter battery which lasts for a life time.

Water: A resource the earth cant run out of!!!

Better start beefing up the navy.....LOL!!

 

[Hyde]

thats a good news............. 3000 dollars and you get electricity for 24/7/365 wow! simply amazing

waiting for that box to be available in market so that we can sort out these energy crisis from all over the world

 

[Chanakyaa]

thats a good news............. 3000 dollars and you get electricity for 24/7/365 wow! simply amazing

waiting for that box to be available in market so that we can sort out these energy crisis from all over the world

actually it takes h2 and o2 to make power. so when mains are available u can use electrolysys to make h2 ans when power is gone u use the prepared h2 to make electricity.
you only need to supply water for electrolysys.

This was actually our project but in MATLAB environment and for a 200MW Plant as a standby.

This tech is yet to mature. particularly the size n cost, which is high due the use of platinum.

btw, the u214 has a FC based AIP propulsion.

 

[MilesTogo]

his model is based of natural gas or bio-fuel as per the article

 

[Hyde]

actually it takes h2 and o2 to make power. so when mains are available u can use electrolysys to make h2 ans when power is gone u use the prepared h2 to make electricity.
you only need to supply water for electrolysys.

This was actually our project but in MATLAB environment and for a 200MW Plant as a standby.

This tech is yet to mature. particularly the size n cost, which is high due the use of platinum.

btw, the u214 has a FC based AIP propulsion.

oh so it works like UPS that we use in Pakistan...... when the power is on, it generates/stores electricity and when the power goes off it start producing electricity? and UPS too requires water only as far as i know

 

[Ingis]

I hope scientists develop a way to mitigate the energy crisis.

I read an article in the The Economist which said that we will reach 'peak oil' somewhere around 2014-15 and after that, it will become extremely hard to drill oil at desired levels.

Another expert said that oil production already peaked in 2005 and such reports, backed by several scientists, are extremely worrying considering the fact that oil and natural gas meet 60% of our energy demands.

Richard Branson of the Virgin Group too recently warned that the world is not taking the impending oil supply crisis seriously.

It is high time global leaders start investing massively in alternative sources of energy. Efforts such as those of K.R. Sridhar need to be encouraged.

 

[sparklingway]

The outlook is good right now. Hope his "invention" isn't just another false source of free and clean energy and is truly something wonderful.

oh so it works like UPS that we use in Pakistan...... when the power is on, it generates/stores electricity and when the power goes off it start producing electricity? and UPS too requires water only as far as i know

Your UPS is charged by the grid power.

 

[Hyde]

Your UPS is charged by the grid power.

may be........ i have no idea about UPS, i have only seen UPS and we have Generator at home that runs on Gas and if needed can be converted into Petrol or Diesal.......... i have seen UPS but no idea how it works

so you are probably right