Bloom Box

[e57]

Will the NEC need to catch up with the wave of Bloom Boxes???? According to this guy - and Colin Powell we could be jamming this in every garage in America co-generating long distance transition of power out of existance, and one for each African village....

I wonder what will keep them all in sync?

 

[byourdesky]

i saw this on 60 minutes the other night but only caught the tail end of the story and keep forgetting to look it up online.....how exactly does it work?

 

[byourdesky]

nevermind...i didnt click the link before i replied

 

[dbuckley]

So its a home generation plant... not terribly different to any independent of grid or intertie system you'd install today.

Takes in 0.66MMBThU of gas (193KW/H), puts out 100KW of elec. Real question is what happens to the missing 93KW of heat. If itys captured for heating, then thats fairly sensible too.

Trouble is, its quite hard to run electrical genertation plant that consumes a primary fuel like NG and generate electricity that is cost competitive with utility juice. And if everyone wanted one of these then a gas distribution upgrade would probably be needed...

 

[480sparky]

i saw this on 60 minutes the other night but only caught the tail end of the story and keep forgetting to look it up online.....how exactly does it work?

The 60 Minutes show.

 

[wireguru]

so this thing uses oxygen and natural gas (a hydrocarbon), whats it exhaust? CO2. What are all the environmental wackjobs going nuts over? CO2. (funny how this is not mentioned on 60 minutes)

in Los Angeles, every home has an earthquake gas shut off valve. Medium size earthquake and no one would have electricity.

The natural gas distribution does not exist to supply these things. I had someone who wanted to install a cogen setup with a capstone microturbine at his (large) house. Its located right off a major street in a big city. The gas co said it would cost close to a million dollars to be able to supply him enough gas to operate the thing. This was for a 30kw unit.

there are many, many flaws with the idea of placing a bloom box in every house, at least within the next 10 to 20 years. It looks like this company has produced a low cost fuel cell, so thats a good thing but I dont expect one in my backyard anytime soon no matter the cost. Just like every other source of "green" energy (solar, wind, now bloom box) there are fundamental flaws which keep it from being practical. What this country needs is more nuke plants, and finish yucca mountain.

 

[StephenSDH]

I think the idea is that it is more efficient with the natural resources. Produces less heat and more electricity, so you use less fuel. We will wait and see. I hope some people hold their breath.

 

[zog]

What this country needs is more nuke plants, and finish yucca mountain.

Amen brother

 

[jmellc]

I love the idea of self contained power sources but the average person cannot buy one of these, I'm sure. I think PV and solar water heating are good places to start for the average Joe. I've seen people in Canada build a solar wh/shower from an old propane tank. They painted tank black, tapped garden hose into and out of tank to shower stall. Worked well. These were folks with no particular mechanical knowledge, most were writers or musicians. Think what could really be done if we try. Power rates will only go up, I have no doubt. Would be good if people didn't have to depend totally on the poco or city utility dept.

Speaking of which, how did poco's get exclusive rights on power dist and sales? My understanding is that I can supply my own power if I can and wish to do so. Suppose my neighbor wants to buy from me and I generate enough to do so? In most locales, that is not allowed. Why not, if we meet standards, codes, etc.? Liberty and free markets make a better society.

 

[480sparky]

........Speaking of which, how did poco's get exclusive rights on power dist and sales? My understanding is that I can supply my own power if I can and wish to do so. Suppose my neighbor wants to buy from me and I generate enough to do so? In most locales, that is not allowed. Why not, if we meet standards, codes, etc.? Liberty and free markets make a better society.

Perfectly legal to do so. Anyone can create and distribute electricity. You just need to call yourself a utility and abide by the laws and regulations.

However, it's a David & Goliath situation, and you don't have a single rock, let along a sling.

 

[tom baker]

Speaking of which, how did poco's get exclusive rights on power dist and sales? My understanding is that I can supply my own power if I can and wish to do so. Suppose my neighbor wants to buy from me and I generate enough to do so? In most locales, that is not allowed. Why not, if we meet standards, codes, etc.? Liberty and free markets make a better society.

Yes it is. Its called wheeling. You generate power and its put on the grid, you get wholesale pricing. Your neighbor buys power, an electron is an electron.

 

[dereckbc]

I am pretty skeptical of the thing. Just way too many questions about the thing. I seen a Youtube video with the CEO that was released today and he gave some clues. It uis basically a SOFC fuel cell with some magic proprietary patent.

Some of his numbers added up and gave clues as to how it worked.

Clue 1 is it operates at 900 Degrees
Clue 2 is It has to have a water input.
Clue 3 is it takes a Natural Gas input or Methane
Clue 4 It is a SOFC device.
Clue 4 it is 50% effecient
Clue 5 Fuel Cost (NG) is about 9 to 12 cents per Kwh
Clue 6 it takes oxygen from the air

Ok I am only a stupid electrical engineer and not a scientist, but I think I know enough to get the general idea about thermal and hydro-cracking, and fuel cells to make an educated guess.

The most efficient way to make hydrogen is to take Natural Gas, heat it with steam, and crack the hydrogen off of the hydrocarbon molecules. Well he is using high heat of 900 degrees F so he can make high pressure steam to crack hydrogen. All that is left to to is run it through a fuel cell, combine the hydrogen with oxygen to make water and electricity.

Using his figures of 9 to 12 cents per Kwh cover the therm cost of NG. But here are my questions and skepticism:

At 50% effeciency in no more efficient than conventional power generation from gas well to home as electricity using NG, boilers and turbines. In fact I don't think it is as efficient of 60%. All your doing is trading from the electric utility as your provider to the gas company. I smell Boone T Pickens being a silent partner and inverter.

Lastly he will not say what the exhaust product is. There has got to be left over carbon in that equation like Co2.

I think if it does what he claims would be great for remote power to take on solar directly in remote areas where commercial power is not avaialble as he says it will work with LPG and Methane.

While on bio gas and methane I just cannot see that for a home use as that would be one big pile of poop in the yard.

 

[dereckbc]

What this country needs is more nuke plants, and finish yucca mountain.

No reason to finish Yucca mountain as there is no need to store expended fuel rods. You just recycle them and re-use the left over fuel in them. Fuel rod storage is a man made political made problem, not a technical problem to my understanding.

 

[e57]

Yes it is. Its called wheeling. You generate power and its put on the grid, you get wholesale pricing. Your neighbor buys power, an electron is an electron.

Around here - you often need a service up-grade to include a disconnecting means exterior to isolate yourself from the rest of the secondary unless the system is non-cogeneration and shuts off with the rest of the secondary - and to get back on everything must re-sync automatically. The local POCO has never been found of the idea.

so this thing uses oxygen and natural gas (a hydrocarbon), whats it exhaust? CO2. What are all the environmental wackjobs going nuts over? CO2. (funny how this is not mentioned on 60 minutes)

in Los Angeles, every home has an earthquake gas shut off valve. Medium size earthquake and no one would have electricity.

The natural gas distribution does not exist to supply these things. I had someone who wanted to install a cogen setup with a capstone microturbine at his (large) house. Its located right off a major street in a big city. The gas co said it would cost close to a million dollars to be able to supply him enough gas to operate the thing. This was for a 30kw unit.

there are many, many flaws with the idea of placing a bloom box in every house, at least within the next 10 to 20 years. It looks like this company has produced a low cost fuel cell, so thats a good thing but I dont expect one in my backyard anytime soon no matter the cost. Just like every other source of "green" energy (solar, wind, now bloom box) there are fundamental flaws which keep it from being practical. What this country needs is more nuke plants, and finish yucca mountain.

I personally love it when I get to remind eco-nazis about the fact that bio-diesel still has a CO2 emission.

As far as the box goes - I'm not sure how efficiant it would be to have everyone with a generator at home as opposed to having central generation, the inventor claims that power companies could also buy these and place them at sub-stations - yeah - just what you need - larger gas lines to high-voltage sub-stations. And yeah - if there is a failure of a networked system cascading effects may destabilize current flows extending to whole regions. (Even though Enron choreographed artificial shortages - real blackouts occurred due to equipment failure all over California - some resulting in deaths...)

Nuke it up - And as far as Yucca Mt. - we should have been following the same fuel cycle reprocessing system the rest of the world has used many years ago. Then a again - nuke waste somehow makes armor piercing bullets that we scatter all across battle-fields of the wars we're in??? Not sure why we do that???? :roll:

 

[220/221]

They didn't ONCE address the issue of the fuel cost.

I wan't something that doesn't burn fuel dammit!.

 

[e57]

They didn't ONCE address the issue of the fuel cost.

I wan't something that doesn't burn fuel dammit!.

I have a fantasy of the black box solution - i.e. no fuel power from the aether - but as soon as I build one the ATF, CIA, and host of other armed acronyms would descend on my home to violate my human rights - soooo I have opted not to....

 

[dereckbc]

They didn't ONCE address the issue of the fuel cost.

I wan't something that doesn't burn fuel dammit!.

Yes they did indirectly as DBuckley correctly pointed out:
Takes in 0.66MMBThU of gas (193KW/H), puts out 100KW of elec.


To extract the cost depends on your location and the local price of NG. Dirt cheap here in TX and OK.

Problem I have with that it is no better than conventional gas well to home electric efficiency using conventional centralized NG boiler generation. In fact is not quite as good. All you are doing is trading the NG company for your electric company. That makes me think Boone T Pickens is involved somewhere like a silent investor or partner.

 

[benaround]

Bloom Energy has already installed systems in sites for; FedEx , Wal-Mart , Google , E-Bay,

Bank of America , etc. and they are all looking forward to getting more systems installed.

Are you still skeptical ?

 

[e57]

Maybe it could run on whiskey? Think about it, they claim it can run on ethenol - why not moonshine?

 

[dbuckley]

Its just another small sized generation plant.

History is littered with them.

The first I can recall is the Fiat Totem, in the 70s, which put out 15KW electricity, but that was "free" - it put out as much hot water as you would expect for the gas that went in for the efficieny of boilers of the day, so the elec was a free bonus. Now that NG boilers are not 40% efficient but 90+% efficient then benefits of not throwing away the heat has gone, just use decent boilers.

The latest incarnation of the tiny CHP plant is the WhisperGen, a New Zealand (yay!) product that sells well in Europe.

Fuel cells have been around for a long time too; is the one outside the Central Park police station still there? In 100KW sizes they get used for data centres.

Someone already mentioned the Capstone turbines; they too are cool, and produce high temperature heat output, so again have been used where you need heat and power (or cooling and power)

But the bottom line remains - its hard to compete with a utility - they produce cheap electricity - cheaper than you can do yourself. If you have your own plant there either has to be a good reason for it, it you're just having your own plant just because you can.