Indian scientist’s revolution in making electricity from home
Dr Sridhar’s Bloom Box consists of ceramic disks, coated with green & black inks
Hydrocarbons, such as natural gas, are stored in an adjacent tank & pumped into the Bloom Box to produce clean, abundant electricity
The ‘power plant-in-a-box’ can produce one kilowatt of electricity
Bloom Box for homes could be out in 5-10 years for as little as $3,000
Some beach sand minted into floppy-sized ceramic tiles, a coating of secret ink, and just about any fuel — enough to crank out electricity in your home or business without the old-fashioned transmission grid.
California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at the launch, which is to take place on the eBay campus. On Sunday, CBS’ 60 Minutes homed in on Sridhar’s breakthrough technology, bringing huge attention to Bloom Energy’s bare-bones website that cryptically announced “Be the Solution” — and a clock counting down to Wednesday’s launch.
Bloom Energy’s CEO KR Sridhar calls it “powder-to-power,” a new form of clean, reliable electricity made locally rather than at distant power plants, thus reducing the need for new transmission lines and relieving pressure on the existing grid.
Presenting a technology that he claims will revolutionise energy industry in much the same way cell phones changed communications, the India-born scientist-entrepreneur on Wednesday formally launched the “Bloom Box,” at a Bay Area event attended by Silicon Valley digerati and California governor Arnold Schwartnegger among others.
“What people need to understand is we are not building a company, we are building an industry,” Sridhar told the elite gathering, after whipping the covering off a glass case filled with beach sand — with the floppy disk sized ceramic tile buried in it.
The tile, coated with different coloured secret inks that act as an anode and cathode, forms a basic unit of a fuel cell. They are stacked together to scale into a power box that can range from a bread-loaf sized unit to a much larger arrangements the size of a refrigerator or a truck.
Power is generated through an electrochemical process when natural gas or other fuel is injected into the unit. Several US companies already using Bloom Boxes, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, and Google, endorsed the technology at the event hosted by EBay, but questions centered on costs.
Sridhar said the Bloom servers can provide electricity at 9 to 10 cents (about Rs 4; which is about the same as in India currently) per kilowatt hour, compared with 14 cents for power from the grid. But that includes subsidies from the state, which Sridhar maintained is necessary for any new industry till costs come down.
That could take up to a decade. Bloom boxes currently being used by companies such as eBay which produce 100 Kilowatts of power — enough for 100 homes — cost $700,000 to $800,000 (about Rs 4 crores) per unit. The kind of bread-loaf sized individual unit – a home energy server — that Sridhar waved around which can power an individual home will take five to ten years to materialize and may cost around $ 3000 (about Rs 1.25 lakhs). “’Don’t go running to place your order just yet,”’ Sridhar joked.
A hoax it is not, although some are suggesting that there is a lot of hype around the launch — somewhat like with that of the Segway transporter that was much ballyhooed but did not live up to its billing. Large-sized Bloom Boxes of the kind installed at some Silicon Valley campuses cost around $7,00,000 to $8,00,000. Sridhar estimates that a Bloom Box for the residential market could be out in five to 10 years for as little as $3,000 to produce electricity 24/7/365.
But Silicon Valley, whose capitalist Kleiner Perkins bankrolled Bloom Energy, is endorsing the technology.
EBay said it had already saved $1,00,000 in electricity costs since its 5 boxes were installed nine months ago. It even claimed that the Bloom Boxes generate more power than the 3,000 solar panels at its headquarters. Google has a 400 kilowatt installation from Bloom in Mountain View.
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