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- I just took a look at the Bloomenergy specifications and this thing is a joke. The basic unit providing energy is the size a truck at approximately 19 feet x 7 feet by 7 feet and weighing in at 10 tons (20,000 pounds.) This unit is supposed to supply 100Kw which Bloomenergy claims can support 100 homes. Are they crazy?
If 100 homes used 100Kw the average is 1 Kw each. A toaster requires 1500 watts, or 1.5 Kw. A hair dryer also requires about 1.5 Kw. A real house needs at least 20Kw and therefore, the basic power unit they sell could only power 4 or 5 homes and not 100. There is barely enough energy to power a doll house let alone an average house. Furthermore, the image of that guy holding a brick that would supply your home 24/7 is totally a fraud. Using the specification numbers, they claim that a single fuel cell will provide 25 watts. Thus, it will take 4000 cells to achieve 100 Kw. Since the basic unit clocks in at 20,000 pounds, that's 5 pounds of equipment per fuel cell. Even at 1Kw, you would need 40 of those units and at 20 Kw you would need 800 of those cells with a weight of 4000 pounds, hardly something he could hold in his hand as shown on the show. This is entirely a scam and CBS is going to have to apologize on the air, and real soon. - Reply to this comment
- We are located in the San Juan Mtns. in Colorado with acerage and have been off the grid for over 7 years using Solar and generator backup. We started when there wasn't much available, and it has had it's challenges. Many others in this area also rely soley on Solar power with Generator backup. We are very interested in your Bloom box and would be willing to use our property and home for experimental use for this project.
Please contact us with more information and if this would be useful to you.
Contact this email address if interested.
We are most anxious to continue to conserve our natural resources and use what ever other sources are available.
Respectfully,
Rita - Reply to this comment
- True Numbers for Bloom Energy fuel cell performance can be found here on the DOE Hydrogen Program 2009 Annual Merit Review Proceedings Fuel Cells: http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/annual_review09_fuelcells.html #5 under Distributed Energy.
Slides 12 and 13 clearly show a steady degradation over each month. Approximately 1% per month, which is quite large and on par with other past fuel cells. Also the AC efficiency is clearly stated at "45% peak net electric efficiency in electric-only mode" slide 9. This is on par with other demonstrated fuel cells from Accumentrics, Siemens, and GE. More importantly a large scale combined cycle gas turbine power plant can readily achieve 45% efficiency.
Please share the facts and prevent the public from giving the venture capitalists cash in another Plug Power scenario! - Reply to this comment
- What really gave me hope in this 60 Minutes segment, was not that this fuel cell might be able to be sold to homeowners for $3,000 some day and power their entire home, but that there are at least 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley today, working on essentially the same thing -- 21st century energy production from new sources.
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- Now someone needs to come up with Mr Fusion to take care of waste to Feed the Bloom box or for the time being we can use solar panels to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen. Mitch McConnell wants everyone to have a lump of coal. I prefer the Bloom Box instead.
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- They need to start advertising! I want one!
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- The process of Bloom Energy will add to efficiency. At least it will turn the energy locked in methane into electricity without producing heat. Heat is wasted energy. By converting methane, a gas, to electric energy outside your house the electric power will not be wasted by the resistance of electric wires. I hope I can buy one soon so I can say goodbye to the Middle East and drive into the sunset in my electric car.
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- This absolutely ridiculous. It's a fuel cell, nothing more, nothing less. This isn't groundbreaking, just clever marketing, and a few dumb journalists took the bait. They must be thinking Obama slashed fuel cell funding, so they'll just call it a Bloom Box instead. They don't give any technical details whatsoever, a good indicator that this isn't very promising. There are plenty of fuel cell companies selling combined heat and power fuel cells that run on natural gas in Europe now. I don't hear anything special about this. It doesn't even mention using waste heat, so it is probably less efficient then what is on the market today. And they are telling bold faced lies when they say "emissions free." It is using natural gas! You can't just make the carbon disappear - it must be released somehow. If they have a reformer before the fuel cell converting methane to hydrogen, maybe the fuel cell doesn't have emissions but the reformer does. Most of the hydrogen made in the US comes from natural gas. The fuel cell industry likes to say "emissions free," but they added energy to convert natural gas to hydrogen, and released all the carbon that was there. Someday all fossil fuels will run out and prices will keep increasing until then. The only promising energy sources are nuclear and solar. We need to stop wasting money on fuel cell research since they already in production. Companies like Altergy are already making cheap fuel cells on an automated assembly line, probably much cheaper than these guys can make one. A very disappointing article that will mislead many people, in my opinion.
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- by erasmus111 February 22, 2010 5:38 PM EST
And so when did I ever say that I hated hockey?
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My apologies, I now recall you may have said that you "don't watch hockey much" during a coversation we had abooot the accents of West vs. East players....I may be wrong. - Reply to this comment
- by Clemsson February 22, 2010 5:09 PM EST "When I went to the Amazon as a law student, I was fully invested in the fiction that I was going to fight against multinational conglomerates who were destroying the rain forest for lumber and minerals. I pictured myself fighting a quixotic battle to protect native peoples from evil European invaders intent on raping the land."
Nothing like simplifying the equation to the lowest common denominator that you happen to agree with - or that you can profit from.
For thousands of years, the natives of the Amazon practiced sustenance farming where they slashed and burned and moved on....on small plots of land that absent the hand of man and due to the fecundity of the jungle around them, were quickly overgrown and returned to a jungle habitat.
Then the corporations and their demands for cattle and energy came along, transforming sustenance farming into corporate farming. The native inhabitants were pushed ever further into the interior of the Amazon, as the lands they were pushed from were overtaken by corporate farms.
And then, of course, there is the timber interests...
Sustenance farming is not corporate farming, but the lawyer in your soul chose to blind you to the native population, and cause you to interpret "They grew sustenance foods as well as whatever was sellable at the market, like palms for biofuel oil and sugar cane for ethanol." as if those new ventures were not driven by the introduction of greed into an environment where it had been alien.
Notice how I careful avoid mentioning capitalism's tradition market-makers, the various Christian religions - those who invade the far reaches of the planet to demand that the planets inhabitants not be self-reliant, but instead go clothed, buy Bibles manufactured far away, build proper churches containing manufactured religion icons, and on and on?
I do hate to get religion involved, even though their seven century-long role as the spear point of capitalism rather puts the lie to their professed faith.
lolll...capitalism - greed, systematized - is the snake in the garden. - Reply to this comment
