Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Buy electricity from our nearest dealer!

Imagine that the issue of global warming is solved for ever!
Imagine that the issue of power failures is a part of history!
Imagine the end of shocking electricity bills!
Imagine a world free of pollution of all kinds!

In the near future, we are going to have all these and God-knows-what!!! Welcome to the future of electricity! And don’t be surprised to hear that it is being launched by an Indian-American rocket scientist—Dr. K.R.Sridhar.

His company—Bloom Energy—calls it Bloom’s Energy Server, “a new class of distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site.” Built with solid oxide fuel cell technology, the company claims that it can change “the way the world generates and consumes energy”.

No wonder, companies of the stature of Google, Ebay, Walmart etc. are plying to Bloom Energy for help.

Already, a 400kW power generation facility, installed by Bloom Energy at Google’s main campus in the US, is delivering clean and affordable power, with 98% availability in the first three months and supplying 3.8 million kWh of electricity in the process!

The story

Great stories have great beginnings! Originally called Ion America, Bloom Energy traces its roots to a then NASA project to generate air and fuel from electricity, and/ or electricity from air and fuel. Dr. K.R Sridhar and his team embarked on this project, so that; they could come up with a technology that would sustain life on Mars. But to their surprise, they found that the project can potentially change life on earth, rather than on Mars! Their NASA project ended in 2001.

Taking that as an opportunity, the team decided to continue their research and start a company. In 2002, they got John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins( who funded Google and Amazon.com, in the initial stages) for investors, raising more than $400 million.

By 2006, they tasted success when the field trials in various places bore fruit. And in July 2008, Google became their first commercial customer.

Since then, millions of kWhs of clean energy has been generated by the Bloom’s Energy Servers in different places. The advantage of clean energy is that, it practically nullifies the emission of carbon-di-oxide to the atmosphere, thus diminishing global warming.

Today, Dr.K.R. Sridhar shares the same table with General Collin Powell, the former US Secretary of State, as one of the directors of the company.

The technology

Bloom’s Energy Server runs on patented solid oxide fuel cell technology. Fuel cells convert fuel into electricity through an electro-chemical process which is clean and devoid of combustion.

Bloom Energy claims that their technology is different from that of hydrogen fuel cells in many ways: use of low cost materials, twice the efficiency of some power generation systems, fuel flexibility in which renewable or even fossil fuels can be used, and even the capability of energy generation and storage at the same place!

Every Energy Server consists of thousands of Bloom’s fuel cells, each cell, capable of producing about 25W of power, enough to light an electric bulb. “Each cell is a flat solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like powder”, Bloom’s website claims.

The cells are stacked, and a stack of cell (about the size of a loaf of bread) can power an average home!

Future blooms

Use of coal for power generation accounts for roughly 20% of global GHG (Green House Gas) emissions. In the U.S, more than 90% of GHG emissions come from burning of fossil fuels.
Bloom’s fuel cells can stop these catastrophic figures from rising further in the planet, and prevent deterioration of environment, as well as, enhance the quality of life of humanity.

This modular architecture of distributed, on-site power generation can save lot of time, space, money and effort!

In ten years, the technology is going to hit the stands in the name of ‘Bloom Box’, addressing residential needs at a cost less than Rs.1.5 lakh!

Now, Imagine!

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