More on Bloom Energy....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-3-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

Recently, Bloom Energy recently rolled back the curtain on their technology and product. They now are getting into production with a commercial product that can make electricity from natural gas or methane and perhaps other fuels onsite and cost effectively enough to save enough in reduced bills from grid distributed energy in 7 to 8 years to pay for their system.

It would be nice if that could be lowered to 2 to 4 years in the future; and it may be.

The key is using a fuel cell that does not require hydrogen or platinum or dangerous acids to work but which works as well or better as fuel cells that do. They apparently have such a technology that works.

See http://www.bloomenergy.com for more details.

Also, their initial product for the commercial market produces enough power for 100 homes. But the technology IS adaptable to make fuel cells of perhaps a three hundredth that size that will be sold for various sizes of homes and much smaller businesses. And, since their email list sign up leaves a place to check if you have an interest in a residential system, they likely do have in mind making those.

That means that a well to do homeowner in an area that burns coal for electricity will soon be able to afford to stop relying on that power which will help increase the economy while avoiding the need for more coal fired plants.

Apparently, that is already true for businesses or soon will be as Bloom Energy rolls out their commercial product and increases production.

Even better, in areas like the Silicon Valley where the reliability of the supply of electricity is important and for which, despite the threat of earthquakes that disrupt both natural gas and electricity, most outages of electric power are from airplanes hitting power towers or wind storms taking out power lines or summer blackouts from excess demand overloading the grid – while at EVERY ONE of those times, natural gas continues uninterrupted.

So even if a business didn’t set up for all of their power needs to come from solar, wind, and Bloom’s fuel cells, they could have enough from some Bloom’s fuel cells alone if they were set up properly to keep the critical things running at slightly reduced levels when the grid provided electricity goes down.

Recently, I got an email from Bloom Energy that for now they are sticking with their commercial sized product that is a good bit too large for homes -- although a good sized set of apartments or condominiums might be a good market.

Also, since some of the equipment in ports, commuter trains, and ships are powered by diesel engines that produce both nitrogen oxides that produce smog and directly cause disease and worse with particulate pollution, they may well have a market here also for their current sized units.

An ideal use would be for ships that transport LNG, liquid natural gas, since the LNG could be used efficiently to power the ship by using Bloom Energy’s product instead of diesel to provide electricity to power the ship.

General Electric might directly consider trying Bloom energy’s current product to provide a much more clean burning way to make electricity for the locomotives built by GE’s division that builds those. These locomotives would be ideal for commuter lines that now go through areas that suffer air and noise pollution from the diesel electric locomotives used now. Such locomotives might well also offer significant savings on engine maintenance to train operating companies!

Then, when Bloom Energy is ready and able to try the market for smaller units, a really interesting idea would be to use their product to power fuel cell powered plug-in hybrids in cars and trucks that run on natural gas.

Since the amount of onboard natural gas would be small and the distance between fill-ups would be large, this might work well. But the real value is that this would be MORE energy efficient and dollar efficient than using diesel or gasoline or liquid biofuels.

Best of all, it would dramatically lower air pollution in cities where such vehicles are operated!

Why put up with car and truck caused air pollution in our cities when all electric cars and trucks and plug-in hybrids using Bloom Energy’s product can be used and have no air pollution instead?

A related idea would be to use their current product to supply charging stations for all-electric cars and plug-hybrids. That would enable setting up such stations in places where getting on the grid would take longer or cost more or not be doable.