KR Sridhar and Bloom Energy premiered on 60 minutes tonight. Bloom Energy is developing fuel cells and is currently funded by Venture Capital.
The Bloom energy box is a fuel cell capable of producing electricity for homes, offices etc… The units are “fuel agnostic,” Sridhar said, meaning they can be powered by a variety of inputs, including biomass and natural gas. Looks very promising. They are field testing with Google, Ebay and other companies. According to the interview on 60 minutes. The fact they they are already field testing and resolving real world issues is encouraging that this will be a real world option soon.
Here is an audio interview via freshDialogues
Currently their sites has a countdown clock set for 2 days and 14 hours from now. http://www.bloomenergy.com/ Looks like the stealth mode is officially over.
By doing a quick patent search you find that Bloom Energy has been filing patents since February of 2003.
This video show a ceremonial signing of an agreement with Kaori of Taiwan.
The promise is that you could have one in your basement powering your house. The next step would be converting household appliances to DC to minimize useless conversion loss. Most appliances take the AC and convert it to DC anyway. This conversion produces loss in the form of heat.
Interested to learn of ideas you are working on.
Can you send info on how it works and combines with ways to save energy.
Thank you,
Kitci
I am not personally working on it. Here is a better explanation on how fuel cells work.
http://www.fuelcells.org/basics/how.html
I’ll have to write a how to save energy article another day. Too much to cover right now.