Technically Speaking
South Asia Technical Analysis with Phil Smith
from Environment Forum:
Is Bloom Energy the next GE?
Updated on Feb 24.
The blogosphere is rumbling with anticipation of the "Bloom Box", a pint-sized "power plant" that could change the way we power our homes and offices forever.
The buzz began Sunday when 60 minutes aired an exclusive profile of the alternative energy fuel cell developed by startup Bloom Energy and its CEO K.R. Sridhar (a former rocket scientist) in Silicon Valley. After eight years in the making, the power plant in a box is set to be released Wednesday with California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Colin Powell on hand.
"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," reports CNet News.
What makes this claim to the perfect, zero-emission energy source different? For starters, backing from Walmart, eBay, Google, Staples, FedEx, and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments.
And, the World Economic Forum names Bloom Energy as one of 26 top 2010 Technology Pioneers: Energy and Environment.
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The Wall
So one thing that I think is missing in the equation is the energy cost of producing the fuel cells. They aren’t infinite, which means they are consumable, which means they need to be replaced periodically. What is going to make these? Unless they’ve come up with a way of getting more electricity out of a fuel cell than it takes to produce them, it is worthless.