Understanding the Bloom Box

We've been reading a lot of material about the "Bloom Box", a new fuel cell product being launched in the US. The product was formally launched at eBay's headquarters on Wed Feb
24th, and has a reported $400m of venture capital, with Walmart,
Google, Staples, FedEx, Bank of America and Coke also trying out the
device.

Just to try to understand the benefits of it:

Just like your local power station, the Bloom box takes natural gas and makes electricity from it.

The latest technology in a gas power station can make electricity with an efficiency of up to 60 per cent - although many old stations are much less efficient, eg around 30 per cent efficient. Bloom's solid oxide fuel cell will make electricity of 50 to 55 per cent.

The Bloom Box costs between $700,000 and $800,000 and generates 100 kW of power. (so say $7000 per kW). This is much more than the cost of a gas power station (GBP 250 per kW typically).

So you're basically investing a lot of money in your own expensive power station.

The company's big technical advance is that it has made solid oxide fuel cells more reliable.

There are advantages to creating electricity in your own premises - you avoid the losses made when electricity has to travel long distances (a few percent) and you make a lot of heat which you might be able to use for something else (eg heating water, or the building). It is hard for power stations to make use of the enormous amounts of heat they make without connecting themselves to a nearby tower block (as the Russians used to do).

The product was formally launched at eBay's headquarters on Wed Feb 24th, and has a reported $400m of venture capital, with Walmart, Google, Staples, FedEx, Bank of America and Coke also trying out the device.

The device could be useful if people wanted a way to make their own electricity from waste gas (eg from a local cesspit or dump, or perhaps even a local gas well). It could be useful in parts of the world where there is no electricity supply but a gas supply exists.

The device could be used in reverse - eg to make a hydrogen supply from wind or solar energy - and the hydrogen could then be used to create electricity at times when there was not enough wind or solar power.

Of course, it also provides additional reliability for people who do not feel they can depend on their electricity supply to be always there - some parts of the US are getting accustomed to electricity blackouts. You have to have a supply of natural gas for it to work, but it would be unlikely to lose both natural gas and electricity supply at the same time.

So inconclusion - not sure of the short term benefits - but over the long term, it could be an interesting part of fuel cells role in society - particularly if there is a drop in gas and electricity supplies.