The BloomBox: Zero Emission Powering Your Home by Bloom Energy
Geschreven op 22-2-2010 - Erik van Erne. Geplaatst in Energie en Besparing
There have been rumblings for some time about a mysterious little box that could change the energy world forever. The BloomBox is a fuel-cell power plant the size of a door stop that can power a house year-round.
Larger ones can power just about anything. These little boxes could entirely replace the grid as we know it.
Sounds a little pie-in-the-sky, but according to 60 Minutes by Lesley Stahl—the first behind the scenes look at the technology—its potential is huge.
Google been quietly powering one of its data centers with four of these magic boxes for 18 months, and FedEx, Walmart, Staples, and eBay have been trying our the technology as well. eBay’s CEO says they have already saved $100,000 in electricity costs in just nine months. Sources Good and Bloom Energy
The Bloom Box is a solid oxide fuel cell made by Bloom Energy, which generates energy using only oxygen and natural gases. The founder and CEO of the Bloom Box, K.R. Sridhar, along with his team developed this idea by reversing a similar idea they were working on with NASA that used solar panels to electrolyze Carbon Dioxide, which would essential produce oxygen and fuel on Mars.
The Bloom Box uses thin white ceramic plates, which are claimed to be made from “beach sand”. Each ceramic plate is coated with Bloom’s signature black ink on one side (which acts as the cathode) and green ink on the other side (the anode). Oxygen enters the cathode side, while natural gas enters the anode side, and the two gases combine to produce energy. One 10x10cm paper-thin square can power a lightbulb; and these squares can be stacked thousands of times to create “a powerplant in a box”.
Several industrial-sized Bloom Boxes have been deployed in California for a number of corporations like eBay, Google, Wal-Mart and come with a price tag of $800,000. EBay has already released a statement claiming they have saved over $100,000 in fuel costs over a nine-month trial period.
Erik van Erne zegt:
26 februari 2010 om 14:11 | Permalink
Why is Bloom Energy lying to us? | Yahoo! Green http://goo.gl/2tK4
The Bloom Box – innovation or replication? http://goo.gl/GZrp
Harmen zegt:
26 februari 2010 om 15:25 | Permalink
Zero emission, daar gaat het al mis. Input is nog steeds aardgas. Efficiency van het apparaat is 50-52%, dat is netjes. De warmte is namelijk ook nuttig te gebruiken, want lokaal in te zetten. Het is een onderdeel van stap 3 van de trias energetica: efficienter gebruiken van fossiele brandstof. Stap 1: besparen moeten we niet verwachten van de leverende partij, dat zal de (energie)-consument toch echt zelf moeten doen.
Het apparaat is trouwens een brandstofcel, niet zoveel nieuws. Wat nieuw is is dat deze goedkoop geproduceerd kan worden.
Erik van Erne zegt:
28 februari 2010 om 12:53 | Permalink
Erik van Erne zegt:
28 februari 2010 om 12:54 | Permalink
Bloom Energy Fuel Cells at EBay
Erik van Erne zegt:
30 september 2010 om 21:25 | Permalink
Energy Adobe Installs Twelve 100kW Bloom Boxes
Adobe, the company behind Flash Player and Adobe Reader, has always been a supporter of renewable energy – remember when they installed a wind farm at their headquarters in San Jose? Well now they’ve taken another huge sustainable step by installing a dozen 100kw Bloom Energy Servers (aka ‘Bloom boxes’) to handle up to one-third of the entire electricity consumption of the their headquarters, which includes three high-rises and a parking structure.
Erik van Erne zegt:
13 juli 2011 om 06:43 | Permalink
AT&T signs up for 11 fuel cell Bloom boxes
Bloom Energy and telecom giant AT&T said today that the clean-tech start-up would install its fuel cell-powered Energy Servers–known colloquially as “Bloom boxes”–at 11 facilities in California.
The AT&T facilities include sites in Corona, Fontana, Hayward, Pasadena, Redwood City, Rialto, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Jose, and San Ramon. The units are expected to provide 7.5 megawatts of energy for AT&T, reducing its carbon emissions footprint for the facilities involved by half, or about 250 million pounds of CO2 per year. Source: CNet