All Your Power Needs in a Backyard Box? Maybe... Not

The recent 60 Minutes coverage of Bloom Energy's power plant in a box and the possibility that it may one day replace the power generation and transmission system as we know it has powered up a Smart Grid-scale controversy.

As Jesse puts it:

In typical fashion, the press is making mountains out of molehills while ignoring the real mountains. For instance they are:

• Trying to cast distributed generation as the enemy of utilities — but why wouldn't utilities join the distributed generation game, as SCE has already done with distributed solar in California?
• Painting Bloom as an earthshaking gamechanger — but it is actually one of at least five dozen distributed fuel cell efforts underway around the world, including from Honda, General Electric and others
• Ignoring the carbon costs — but until we know the eventual cost of carbon, and how Bloom units rank, we can't truly tell if it will be economically viable

John Doerr is a brilliant venture capitalist... and also a brilliant manipulator of the media. Only a few short years ago he was touting ethanol and biofuels as the earth's saviors. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

In the newscast, Bloom CEO and mechanical engineer K.R. Sridhar unveiled the box he said would allow consumers to generate their own electricity and transmit it wirelessly. No noise, no odor, just a box pumping electricity from fuel and oxygen. The technology, he said, was originally invented to provide oxygen on Mars. But when NASA deep-sixed the Mars project, he re-worked his invention to provide power with oxygen as a key component.

He said the boxes should be available at a cost of $3,000 in five to 10 years.

The Bloom box project has received financial and moral support from John Doerr of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Doerr said during the newscast that when Sridhar approached him, he didn't know if the concept would work, but was impressed with the possibilities for clean, cheap energy from a box.

While the box has attracted a lot of fans in a couple of days, it also has attracted critics who raise some pretty tough questions, for instance eMeter's Chris King. While he noted that widespread use of the Bloom box would give utilities and others involved with planning and operating the electric grid massive headaches, he also said it's just as likely that it won't happen.

As King says, even if Bloom can reach its per box cost target of $3,000, the price is still more than power generation from existing technology. While crediting Bloom Energy with "a great vision," he also says reliability is another issue. If the box fails, you're out of luck until you can get it fixed.

While anything green is likely to attract interest in the Smart Grid community, Bloom's chances for bringing its box to market seem sketchy. As noted above, Bloom isn't the only company working on distributed fuel cells. There are big players out there who would love to do it first, and there's no reason to think utilities won't want a piece of the action.

From the source ...

CBS news

eMeter

Related SGN resources ...

Distributed Generation & Renewables

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