The Bloom Box

Energy source of the future or another letdown?

[arieng]

Anybody happen to catch the bit on 60 minutes last night about the Bloom Box? They're these little boxes (maybe twice the size of a rubik's cube) that are mini fuel cells built out of beach sand among other things. Two are enough to power an American home, one would power a European home, or 4-6 Asian homes.

Seems like several 'secret' partners have been testing the technology for some time. Ebay and FedEx are using it, and Google is powering one of their data centers with Bloom boxes. The angel investor that funded Google early on (can't remember his name) has given the developers of the Bloom boxes $100 million.

There seems to be a lot of skepticism in the blogosphere in response to the piece. So is this thing for real or is it all just hype?

[lawman]

Bloom Energy says hooking up one of its $700,000 to $800,000 Boxes is simple. "It takes one guy on a forklift and one technician on the ground to install it,"

[csmonitor.com...]

[Rugles]

I noticed on 60 Minutes they kept skipping over the part that Nat. Gas is required to run the thing. So that means its "greener" but not perfectly green.

I suspect they are pushing it now because we are getting very close to solar parity and if we do reach solar parity their massive investment will be for nothing.

[arieng]

Yeah, the timing seemed kinda fishy. They did a complete 180 from total secrecy to a national primetime broadcast, seemingly overnight.

In some cases, CO2 is still being emitted by whatever power is feeding the Bloom Box. Rather than calling this new device "zero emission energy," maybe it's better to think of it as a booster pack for already-green sources and as an impressive new filter for dirty ones.

I think this quote from the article linked to by lawman is the best explanation of what the Bloom Box does.

[jecasc]

Well, at least you can't accuse them to have wasted a lot of the $400 Million they have collected on their website.

A $400 Million budget and they did spend probably $100 of it for their website... Must have used everything up in development.