PG&E Shrugs Off the Hyped-Up Bloom Box
The hottest thing in alternative energy right now is the Bloom Box. That clever, standalone fuel cell that its creators say could erase the need for grid-tied energy systems, power lines and even utilities. Since its revelation on 60 Minutes last month, followed by a much-hyped presentation at eBay headquarters in 
Silicon Valley, the Bloom Box has received a lot of attention. Enough, you would think, to make utilities nervous. After all, they can’t very well make money if nobody’s connected to their electric grid.
Pish-posh, says Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), a major investor-owned utility serving northern California and a leader in renewable energy. CEO Peter Darbee insists that the release of the Bloom Box does not signal the end of the utility. Bloom Energy, maker of the Bloom Box, wants to see one of their models in every home and business, thus annihilating utilities. Darbee countered that notion by simply pointing to costs. He says the Bloom Box is more expensive than solar power and other renewable resources and therefore has little chance of driving utilities into oblivion.
Darbee noted that there is still a big gap between current electricity prices and the prices that Bloom Energy was suggesting on 60 Minutes. 
Solar power costs are dropping and, while Bloom may be able to bring costs down eventually, as yet the electricity prices that Bloom is able to offer its customers are much more expensive than other renewables.
Bloom Boxes are fuel cells that use ceramic disks and special black “inks” to convert hydrocarbons (typically methane) and oxygen into usable energy. eBay has five of the boxes installed at its headquarters and claims to have saved some $100,000 on energy costs in just nine months. Bloom Energy bills their boxes as cheaper than solar power, a statement that PG&E shrugs off as simply not true… at least not in California. Darbee added that he expects to see “incursions” of fuel cell technology, but in no way is that a harbinger of demise for the utility.
Via San Francisco Business Times
Photo Credit: mocha gala & Christian Science Monitor
Posted on March 5th in Solar News by Dan.
March 5th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
How much does it cost to use the bloom box?
March 5th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
I watched the show a few times, and there were some interesting issues that I picked up immediately. At one pint they mention that their goal is to have a Bloom Box in ever home for around a couple grand per each, though later they say that the ones they have built were sold for between $700K AND $800K with the government paying half. But Let’s start at the beginning of the video. 60 Minutes makes the comment that it would be wireless, which makes no sense at all. Even to get the output electricity into the home would take wires, unless they plan on shooting it through the air. So we can assume that he was talking about no input power wires. Then he holds up a stack of two cubes and makes the statement that “this would power a US home” followed by a joke about other countries not needing both cubes. Now it is very interesting that he later says that it would take 64 of the stacks to operate a Starbucks, which would make me assume that Starbucks uses 32 times the amount of electricity than the average home. But my company is in the energy conservation business, we have worked with a few Starbucks and I know without a doubt that this is not true. Also, anyone with a half a brain will know that he needs more than just a couple cubes sitting in the floor with nothing connected to them. So we must assume that he just overlooked the rest of the unit. Then they explain that you simply feed oxygen to one side of the three plates, and feed fuel to the other side, and it makes electricity. Okay, assuming that it does work, how much oxygen, how much fuel, and what would be the cost of the oxygen and fuel? Then they go into a room and opened something like the size of a refrigerator, which is much larger that just the two cubes there originally were holding, which I expected. Again they say, simply feed in oxygen and fuel and out comes electricity, again without saying how much or the cost of what you are feeding in, other than to say the cost of the fuel is less than previous fuel cells. What kinda made me laugh was that they even mentioned that you could use solar as the fuel, again without saying how much, though we know that the cost of solar is only in the maintenance. Truthfully, the only viable comment that I saw was that the boxes have a smaller footprint that solar. There was also a comment that Googles boxes use half as much fuel as a traditional power plant, which got my interest. It is just that the over all show sounded like a commercial, with way too much valuable information missing. Information like the cost of operations per watt, etc., cannot be proprietary information? And with government incentives, that we all pay for, I can see too many ways that they could make money without ever doing what they say they plan on doing. And being in the energy business I have seen way to many corrupt cons that suck the money from the government without producing anything. Well, at least I know that in my business I may not be developing new technologies, but at least I am cutting companies electric bills in half all over the US, and I can sleep at night with a good feeling.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:45 am
“Peter Darbee” is scared shitless….
March 6th, 2010 at 1:45 am
“Peter Darbee” is scared shitless of the Bloom Box…
September 27th, 2010 at 1:00 am
We are fucked, if this thing really works.