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Energy breakthrough? Have fuel cells for the masses finally arrived?

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Huff Post is running a story on a recent 60 Minutes piece about a new kind of fuel cell—the “Bloom Box” —that is already powering companies like Google, Fed Ex, and EBay (click on the link for video of this story).

It runs on natural gas, and two of these little boxes (about the size of a shoe box combined) could conceivably power your entire home.

Estimated cost: $3,000 for off-the-grid electricity.

It will be interesting to see if these are commercially viable and what else Silicon Valley has in store over the next five years.  Along with electric cars, which roll into showrooms in a matter of months, we are on the cusp of some pretty big technology transformations.

Update:  An educated guess from one of my colleagues, Andy Price, in the energy business:

I hope I am wrong, but the Bloom Box looks like it suffers from the same problem that all fuel cell companies are suffering from: their systems are really expensive per KW.

If Ebay paid $700,000 to $800,000 per unit for 5 units, as was suggested in the story, this would be $3.5 to $4 million. If they saved the stated $100,000 in 9 months this would be a 26 to 30 year payback – and with a fuel cell using natural gas you still need a natural gas pipe and have associated carbon emissions.

If Bloom can somehow deliver the dramatic cost reductions that they claim
this could start to look more attractive but until Bloom provides additional
details, it looks like more hype than substance. Many other well funded
companies including UTC, Honda and GE are working on similar technology and none have been able to deliver the big breakthrough. Yet.

Update 2:  Wired comes to a similar conclusion–too pricey.