Your business probably already uses Wi-Fi for wirelessly connecting laptops in your office, and employees' cell phones are replacing landlines. Now a new energy-in-a-box technology could let your business disconnect from the electrical grid as well.
While many new technologies for untangling businesses and consumers from power lines are emerging, one called the Bloom Box has been receiving a lot of attention recently -- including a feature piece on Sunday's 60 Minutes. The fuel-cell technology, from Bloom Energy in Silicon Valley, Calif., adapts NASA technology to create a clean-energy powerplant in a box that is now being used by several large corporations, including Google, Federal Express, Wal-Mart and eBay.
Derived from NASA Technology
The key scientist behind the box is Bloom Energy founder K.R. Sridhar, who created a similar energy box for generating oxygen on Mars when he worked for NASA. For earth-bound use, Sridhar decided to pump oxygen into the box, where it helps create a chemical reaction that produces electricity.
The fuel cells in the Bloom Box are developed from inexpensive, sand-based ceramics coated with special black and green "inks," whose composition is a closely guarded secret. Instead of requiring pure hydrogen, as many fuel cells do, the Bloom Box can use natural gas, bio-gas or other sources as fuel.
According to the company, which will officially announce the technology on Wednesday, one of the fuel-cell discs can provide enough electricity for a single light bulb, while 64 discs can power a Starbucks.
Google reportedly has been powering one of its data centers for about 18 months with four boxes, using about 50 percent the amount of natural gas that otherwise would be required. eBay has said that its five Bloom Boxes, which run on bio-gas, saved the company $100,000 in electrical costs over nine months.
Currently, the pricing for a Bloom Box is steep at about $700,000-$800,000. The California-based companies that purchased them were helped by state and federal subsidies.
A Bloom Box in Every Home?
Sridhar expects the price for the smaller boxes to drop to a few thousand dollars each, which could make them affordable for the average home. Within five to 10 years, he said, there will be one in every American home.
Such projections could be important in turning Bloom Energy from the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and federal research money into a profitable business. Reportedly, the company also has orders from a variety of other companies, including Coca-Cola, Adobe Systems, and the San Francisco Airport.
But some industry observers note that fuel-cell technology is not new, and there are various patents covering the same basic process. The biggest issue with fuel cells has been making a business out of it.
If Bloom Energy can make a business out of it, Information Technology Intelligence Corp.'s Laura DiDio said, then businesses could be interested. "If you showed businesses an alternative energy" that is clean and cheap, she said, "many companies would, at the very least, give it a look and see."
But, she noted, this and other technologies still need to be "commoditized and perfected."
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/
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