Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Don't know if you guys have heard about this "new" technology... been around for a couple of years, quietly installed at "Google" (running an entire data centre) and at eBay (on the front lawn), where it contributes over 15% of the companies power... at a few other "big" companies... like CocaCola...

The company went public today...with it's "Bloom Energy Server"

http://www.gizmag.com/bloom-energy-server-fuel-cell-launched/14328/

Here's the 60 Minutes story that went to air in the US last week...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khK_QTWl ... r_embedded

Part II

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEJhnvX3 ... r_embedded


The "Bloom Box" can be powered by natural gas, bio-fuel...etc etc..

I saw this a couple of weeks ago on Slashdot, looks pretty promising...

wow, except for this marketing bullshit:
"All electrons are not created equal. Only Bloom Energy delivers electrons that are clean and reliable and affordable… all at the same time… and just for you. That makes them better electrons."

yeah, marketing people really are *sigh*....

I listen to noagendashow.com and they deconstructed this - it costs about $800K per box to build currently - it does work though, and takes about 1 month to produce 1 box. it is based on some sort of fuel cell technology

mass production ? unlikely

this whole release/announcement is so that they can get someone like GE to buy them out.

Well....

The commercial boxes are about 100kW, while a house only needs about one or two kW (average, I think), so that works out to a current price of $8k to $16k for a home system and that should drop with time, so the $3k for a home system might be accurate.

Using it as an isolated power source for a home would suck (loads fluctuate), but if it were linked to the power grid it could take the place of base power sources such as nuclear and coal plants. Too bad those are the cheapest power sources; if they could displace peak power sources it would be far better. Perhaps with power management or supercapacitors one could level one's usage.


The marketing line is a bit weird and annoying, but I can see someone saying
"All fish are not created equal. Only BYAP delivers fish that you know are clean and local… whenever you want… and just for you. That makes them better fish."
Never mind: that still makes me want to vomit....And what do they mean by "all at the same time"? Stupid marketing folks.

After watching the 60 minute show a few weeks ago I wished the interviewer would retire... Especially after asking the guy how the bloombox works and he gave a really simplified explanation of fuel cells and she literally made a statement and used the word "magic"... How can you have someone objectively interview the representative of a "revolutionary technology" when she probably thinks their is magic behind the power outlet. Granted anything a few levels beyond an individuals comprehension can be labeled magic in a funny kind of way but I expect(ed) more out of show like 60 minutes. Crud if they can't ask the hard questions and they are very well funded, then who can/will? Ugh call me too critical but that really made me say What the F out loud... Isn't it amazing how it "debuted" on 60 minutes a few weeks before the IPO years after it's been in use. I mean don't get me wrong, it is impressive with how efficient it is even though it still uses fossil fuels and creates greenhouse gases (CO2) but the fact that google uses it isn't THAT impressive considering they need to have alternate ways of generating electricity to power their servers. The company spends an amazing amount of money on powering their servers so it would make sense for them to drop almost $800k per unit before state/federal rebates. It would be catastrophic for their NOCs/Office's local power grid to go down and for all their "stuff" to go down as well. The gigantic blackout that the Northeast US had in 2004ish? was pretty bad and just goes to show how anitquated our grid actually is... I was in Paris sweating my ass off during the heatwave that killed 20k people so I missed being in NYC that week but I can understand what the lack of electricity can do to a metropolis that uses it as if it's the blood of an organism. So yea, google is pretty innovative in energy department especially when it comes to their server UPS(s). The way they implemented individual UPS batteries for each server rather than hooking all of the servers up to 1 giant UPS saves them a lot on electricity costs b/c they realized it was more efficient to do things that way... I am by no means an expert on electricity generation but from what I had read, the giant power plants are slightly more efficient than the bloom box. Now I don't know stats on how much is lost via high power lines all the way up to the electricity socket but the bloombox sounds like a super marketed local alternative power supply that runs off of natural gas (pick your source of the gas... whether it be from fossil fuels or the methane coming out of a landfill which isn't a bad idea since methane is a worse gas than co2).

Bottom line is even though it's very efficient and works for google, fedex, and ebay it still doesn't ween us off of carbon based fuels. Sure it is toted as an alternative to the "grid" but I guess it's symantics of the term "grid"... Electrical grid or gas grid... Death by invisible electromagnetic waves and cancer 20 years from now or death by a firey inferno. (Puts on tinfoil hat ) I guess the alternative to a gas grid would be to live next to a landfill or super populated cattle/pig farm. Yes, it skips a lot of the mechanical innefficiencies found in small scale combustion engines by using a fuel cell to convert something like methane to electricity making it a practical way of converting carbon based fuel into electricity AND has a novel approach to creating the actual cells (using ink + refined beach sand). I would have been more interested to know how it works using sunlight as the guy mentioned in the 60 minute interview.

Anyways, replace our fossil fuel power plants with a couple of Thorium reactors and let's see what happens. <insert crazy sounding argument about companies that make their bread and butter by keeping us hooked on fossil fuels and death by radioactive waste>. I wonder if anything came about


p.s. Gah I need to stop ranting right before I go to sleep... my bad...

sounds good but I wonder how the waste product is removed?

Fuel cells consuming hydrogen and oxygen produce H2O, if these new fuel cells consume fossil fuels and oxygen there must be a carbon containing by-product of the reaction, although this maybe the bound carbon rather than free atmospheric CO2 produced in traditional fossil fuel systems so would still be an improvement.

The 60 minutes story did not cover this.

not another 'Firepower' go Uranium

That's one of the reasons I'm intrigued by the technology.... the ability to provide baseline power, other than building new coal... or nuclear power stations...

And the possibility of using a "household"scale cell, in combination with solar....

Of course the price would need to come down... but implementation of household scale modules would help drive the price down...

And give households another means to generate their own power... and possibily become independent of the grid...

Really it does mention being carbon neutral when using biogas from a landfill because the carbon is being produced anyway so it produces co2. I'm guessing its burning catalytically. I really like it from a sustainability point. With all the methane from biogas many rural farm homes could actually become small producers of energy and anyone with a 3/4 acre lot could supplement part of their power with it in combination with solar and wind be fairly self sufficient. I'm guessing that each cube is 1kw so at $3K each thats in line with solar now that it's come down. I would buy one now if it was available!

As far as efficiency goes:

The waste heat (50% of input energy) should work well for space heating or, better, hot water, bring total energy utilization to well over 50%....maybe 70%? Co-generation is good.

I've heard numbers on transmission losses as high as 30%, but one authoritative paper I skimmed mentioned that US losses average a bit under 10%, but much higher for some routed and conditions and lower for others.


I noticed his hesitation about solar and assume that what went through his mind was..."what a stupid question....that's not a fuel....but you could electrolyze water to get hydrogen and use that as a fuel, so I'll say yes, even though you can not use solar directly"

I agree and the little cell will probably last a lot longer because of less impurities in hydrogen than natural or bio gas... and no carbon
Just need better conversion from electricity to fuel and back to electrocity.

Off the electric grid onto the gas grid, still it claims to produce electricity from gas more efficently than traditional turbine generaters so it is a good thing.

And there is no huge flue gas stack on top infact doesn't seem to have an exhaust at all..???

Not necessarily Simo... they can be powered by bio-fuels, methane etc... a methane producing composting toilet perhaps...