Bloom Energy Promises Energy Savings to Customers

K. R. Sirdhar, Bloom Energy’s CEO, showed off it’s much awaited Boom Box Energy server this week at Ebay’s San Jose CA headquarters.

“We believe that we can have the same kind of impact on energy that the mobile phone had on communications,” he said.

Though the current models are the size of refrigerators or bigger, and cost around $800,000, the company hopes to have brick sized, $3000, versions available for home use within the next ten years.
Corporate users are promised a 3 to 5 year payback on their initial investment.

Fuel cells have been around for many years and, in fact, were used in NASA’s Apollo flights.

Since this cell produces energy by combining oxygen and natural gas, or bio fuel, to create the chemical reaction it uses to make electricity, the cell runs at very high temperatures, which has raised questions for some about it’s durability.

The very use of bio fuel causes some concern about end cost to consumers because the increased use of these cells could cause natural gas prices. to increase dramatically.

The upside, however, is that families could sell their unused energy back to the utility companies, allowing for savings to the consumer.

Ebay, Google and Wall Mart, are just a few of the businesses already using the Boom Boxes.
Niki Fenwick, spokeswoman for Google, said they have been using four boxes for the last 18 months. She said they make a 400KW installation which has performed with 98% availability.

Ebay said the five boxes they use have taken 15% of it’s campus off the grid.