Bloom Box fuel cell - lots of questions, not many answers

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Lots of questions, and only some answers, about the Bloom Box

By MB-BigB | February 28, 2010

Bloom boxes at ebay

I’m sure you’ve seen all the articles about the Bloom Box, the new fuel cell technology that Bloom Energy revealed this week. To recap, the Bloom Box is a car sized stand alone fuel cell that turns natural gas or other fuels into electricity. Each box, which currently costs about $800,000.00, generates about 100 kilowatts of electricity. The units are already being used by some large US companies, including Google, eBay, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Fedex, and those companies are saying that they are getting both reductions in energy costs and CO2 emissions.

But while Bloom Energy showed off their “power plant in a box” at an event this week, which included lots of execs from the companies already using them, lots of questions remain. The biggest questions concern reliability and costs – fuel cells don’t have the greatest track record for lasting all that long, and the units will need to last at least 10 years before you’ll see widespread adoption.

Here’s some links if you want to read more:

Forbes works through the nubers in “Doing the Math on Bloom Energy”

MSNBC has “10 questions about the Bloom Energy Server”

Ecogeek finds the Bloom press releases to by annoying.

IT World – Bloom Energy: What We know, What We Don’t