By: PG&E

PG&E — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:00:37 +0000

We are fucked, if this thing really works.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:45:36 +0000

“Peter Darbee” is scared shitless of the Bloom Box…

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:45:14 +0000

“Peter Darbee” is scared shitless….

By: Denny Hayes

Denny Hayes — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:41:18 +0000

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.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:29:58 +0000

How much does it cost to use the bloom box?

Comments on: PG&E Shrugs Off the Hyped-Up Bloom Box

By: PG&E

By: Jim

By: Jim

By: Denny Hayes

By: Cathy