What do you get when you mix common sand, metal oxide, a pinch of witches brew, 400 million dollars in venture capitol and then bake it for six hours?
What you get is either an energy source that will save the earth or a hoax of the proportion that PT Barnum would be proud of. That is exactly what the world is waiting to see.
Bloom Energy has mounted a massive media blitz. It started last Sunday with an exposé on the news television show 60 minutes. On the show, the inventor K.R. Sridhar, (who was an ex NASA scientist) explained that this was the best thing since sliced bread. KR went on to explain that his research was originally to design a method to produce oxygen on the planet Mars. When NASA torpedoed that plan KR decided to reverse engineer the process and came up with a device that would burn fuel like natural gas and produce electricity and water as a byproduct. You ask what is this miracle invention ? It’s a fuel cell
OK the hype, Kleiner Perkins has raised over 400 millions dollars in venture capital which by any measure is not chump change. This company has been an early investor in more than 300 IT and biotech firms, including: Amazon.com, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Google, Intuit, Netscape, Segway and Sun Microsystems with a record like this of eight hits and one miss (Segway) you can see the buzz starting develop add some famous personalities’ like the former secretary of state Colin Powell who is on board of directors for Bloom and the governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. For the topping add some customers including Bank of America, Coca-Cola, eBay, FedEx, Google and Wal-Mart, who are showing sizable reductions in both energy costs and CO2 emissions.
A power generator that saves money and the environment? This must be Tomorrowland! And just like that you have gotten the attention of million of people from investors looking for the next Google to earth huggers searching for another way to save the earth.
The reality, fuel cells have been around since the 1960’s they were used to power the Apollo spacecrafts and currently power the space shuttles. They are also used to power buses and produce electricity for some commercial businesses. Part of the appeal is the tax credit that realized for purchasing these devices, in addition to the federal government some states most notability California is also offering tax credit. Therefore there should be no surprise that most of Bloom customers are located there.
On the down side they are expensive to manufacture, operate at extremely high temperature, which can reach 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit and a short life span of ten years. Not to mention the other byproduct that it produces is CO2, our favorite greenhouse gas.
Will it be our salvation or just another hoax just like the discovery of cold fusion? It will take years to determine, but in the meant time as sign in Barnum's American Museum proudly displayed “This way to the Egress”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35590515/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/
http://cleanenergysector.com/2010/02/10-things-to-know-about-bloom-energy/
http://www.bloomenergy.com/
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