FXSTD – Alternative Energy Center

By: Adam Demersseman
The 8 year wait is finally over.  Bloom Energy, in dramatic fashion, has finally released the Bloom Box. 

Run on biogas made from landfill waste, the Bloom Box fuel cell is cheaper than grid power, cleaner than grid power, and perhaps most importantly, is finally available.  Throughout this 8 year, ultra-secretive, project Bloom Energy has received $400 million in funding from the same venture capitalists who funded Google and Amazon.

The Bloom Box is ideal for large businesses that want to save money on power bills and significantly reduce their carbon footprint.  Every business, predictably, wants both of these things.  Google was the first company to try out the Bloom Box.  20 other large companies including Fed Ex, Wal Mart, Staples, and Ebay have since followed suit.

For the last 9 months Ebay has created 15% of its electricity with 5 Bloom Box's that sit, silently, on the campus lawn.  How have they performed so far? 

"Its been very successful, they do what they said they would do," said John Donahoe, CEO of Ebay.  In fact, the Bloom Box has saved Ebay more than $100,000 on electricity costs in the last 9 months, while cutting natural gas usage in half.

In comparison, the 3000 solar panels blanketing the rooftops of Ebay's buildings create 5 times less power than Bloom Energy's fuel cell system, which require almost no space at all.  This begs the question: how good is fuel cell technology?

Fuel cell technology is very good.  It has the ability to create clean, off-the-grid, power for applications as small as the iPhone or as large as the Freedom Towers.  No combustion is required and the fuel cell can be powered from a variety of different fuels.  These benefits have a lot of people excited.  One such person is John Door, the venture capitalist who discovered Google (and subsequently turned a $25 million investment into market capitalization of over $108 billion). 

"New energy technologies could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century," said Door.  Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm who invested in Bloom Energy, was not shy or stingy when it came to signing checks.  

$400 million have been made available for Bloom Energy thus far.  It is clear that executives and investors have kept the big picture in mind throughout the project. The long-term goal is to have a Bloom Box in every home (at a cost of $3000) within the next 5 to 10 years.

Although Bloom Energy has been the most hyped and heavily funded company, they are certainly not the only ones making breakthroughs in fuel cell technology.  Over 100 clean-tech companies are rumored to be involved in the race to the market, with ClearEdge Power and Bloom Energy leading the charge.

ClearEdge Power went public with their fuel cell, the ClearEdge5, about 5 months ago.  It has not received nearly as much attention as the Bloom Box, but is equally if not more impressive.  Ideal for large homes and small to medium sized businesses, the ClearEdge5 runs on natural gas and provides enough electricity and heat to eliminate the need for grid power.  The CE5 is currently available in California and is already saving home and business owners large sums of money. 

It looks like fuel cell technology has finally stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight.  These "power-plant-in-a-box fuel cell things" have perplexed people for years, deemed as complicated, unrealistic, and at times, too good to be true. 

Well, so did the microwave oven, the cell phone and the laptop.