There’s been a lot of buzz lately surrounding Silicon Valley’s Bloom Energy.  The company, having recently been featured on 60 Minutes (see video below), held a press conference today formally announcing the product it has been developing for eight years.  With initial investors and early adopters like Google, Ebay (whose campus hosted the press event), and Walmart on hand, Bloom Energy revealed to the world the Bloom Server, a solid oxide fuel cell based device that acts as a “distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site.”

The promise of fuel cells has been around for generations.   Unfortunately, their high development, infrastructure, and material costs have severely limited their widespread adoption.   Bloom Energy, through a proprietary and efficient solid oxide fuel cell manufacturing process that uses inexpensive materials like ordinary sand, has developed a sustainable product that can be affordably manufactured and runs on either conventional fossil fuels or renewable energy sources.

“For decades, experts have agreed that solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) hold the greatest potential of any fuel cell technology.  With low cost ceramic materials, and extremely high electrical efficiencies, SOFCs can deliver attractive economics without relying on [combined heat and power schemes].  But until now, there were significant technical challenges inhibiting the commercialization of this promising new technology.  SOFCs operate at extremely high temperature (typically above 800°C).  This high temperature gives them extremely high electrical efficiencies, and fuel flexibility, both of which contribute to better economics, but it also creates engineering challenges.   Bloom has solved these engineering challenges.  With breakthroughs in materials science, and revolutionary new design, Bloom’s SOFC technology is a cost effective, all-electric solution.”

And while the company would like a version of the Bloom Server to ultimately power homes in the U.S., Europe, and beyond, consumer grade products aren’t expected for at least a decade.   Instead, Bloom will continue to sell its 100kW devices to the very largest energy consumers for around $750,000 each, just as it has already with Ebay, Google, and Walmart, amongst others.   While that price may seem steep, Bloom cited an approximate $0.03 – $0.05 per kWh savings in the electricity generated by the Bloom Server compared to that of the average utility company.   Using this savings rate, some interesting (although crude) calculations can be made.

With a $0.05/kWh savings rate, each 100kW Bloom Box running at full capacity will save its user approximately $3600 per month (100kW x 720hrs x $0.05/kWh). Since around half of the $750,000 device cost is subsidized by state and federal grants, companies could recoup their initial $375,000 investment in around 8.5 years.   Not bad. Scaling these calculations down to the approximately 1kW capacity Bloom Server indicative of an average home’s needs, users could expect to pay $7500 for a device that will pay for itself in under a decade, after which it will reduce their electricity costs by approximately a third.  Bloom’s largest challenge is admittedly continuing to drive costs down.

But again, residential uses of Bloom’s technology are likely several years away.   Instead, the company will sell the devices to commercial users, possibly including the very power generation companies with which the Bloom Server will compete.  It would benefit power companies greatly to invest in and install these energy servers in remote or heavily consumptive energy regions, thus reducing the use of costly and wasteful existing energy transmission systems, compared to which Bloom claims its energy servers are twice as efficient.

With Bloom’s announcement, the future of the clean energy movement got a substantial boost today.  In what is one of the most promising potential changes to our highly embedded energy infrastructure, Bloom has reinvigorated the industry.  Coupled with other clean and renewable energy technologies like IBM’s solar cells made from Earth-abundant materials and New Energy Technology’s kinetic energy harvesting MotionPower pads, Bloom’s technology will allow our future to be literally as bright as we’d like.