Amos:

I didn't notice any misteak but thanks for correcting whatever it was.


I learned about a new and somewhat controversial method for generating electricity on location that is clean and efficient. The technology exists and it is being tested by Ebay, Google, Fedex, Walmart, Coca Cola, BOA and others. The technology is SOFC Solid Oxide Solid Fuel Cell

However it uses fossil fuels, it operates at 800+ degrees plus and produces heat pollution. It might be better than coal and other fossil fired electric generating plants but it still not a permanent solution to global warming. It appears to be mainly a money saving device for big corporations.

"Bloom Energy Server [generator not computer server] technology is based upon stacking small fuel cells which operate in concert. Bloom Energy has made a technological advance by developing stacked fuel cells where individual plates expand and contract at the same rate at high temperatures. Scott Samuelsen of the University of California, Irvine National Fuel Cell Research Center questions how long the reliable operational life Bloom Servers will be. "At this point, Bloom has excellent potential, but they have yet to demonstrate that they've met the bars of reliability." Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory expert Michael Tucker told the San Jose Mercury News, "Because they operate at high temperatures, they can accept other fuels like natural gas and methane, and that's an enormous advantage... The disadvantage is that they can shatter as they are heating or cooling."

John Doerr, who is one of the major venture capitalists of the company, asserts that the Bloom Energy Server is cheaper and cleaner than the grid. An expert at Gerson Lehrman Group, wrote that, given today's electricity transmission losses of about 7% and utility size gas fired power stations efficiency of 26-48%, the Bloom Energy Server is up to twice as efficient as a gas fired power station, but no less efficient than one. In a followup story entitled "Bloom Box: Segway or savior?" Fortune noted on 24 February 2010 that "Bloom has still not released numbers about how much the Bloom Box costs to operate per kilowatt hour" and estimates that natural gas rather than bio-gas will be the primary source of fuel for Bloom Energy Servers. Jonathan Fahey of Forbes comments:

    Are we really falling for this again? Every clean tech company on the planet says it can produce clean energy cheaply, yet not a single one can. Government subsidies or mandates keep the entire worldwide industry afloat... Hand it to Bloom, the company has managed to tap into the hype machine like no other clean tech company in memory."

Sridhar also said the boxes will have a 10 year life span. The CEO of eBay says Bloom Energy Servers have saved the company $100,000 in electricity bills since they were installed in mid-2009, yet Paul Keegan of Fortune calls that figure "meaningless without the details to see how he got there." ...More here

I still believe that instead of all this hype and running around like Chicken Little, we need to take a deep breath and think farther into the future where there will be just too many people consuming energy that will create thermal pollution and global warming, even if the source is 100% carbon neutral.