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[E3 wise]

From the Technology Desk of E3 Wise and EPWG
By Jeff Moore

Earlier this month several major news outlets announced that Apple would be installing 24 Bloom Box fuel cells at its new data center to support the company’s iCloud online data storage system and its SIRI voice-recognition software in Maiden, about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte North Carolina, making the state the nation’s largest private fuel cell energy project, a nonpolluting, silent power plant that will generate electricity from natural gas and biofuel.

The Bloom Box is a solid oxide fuel cell which has up to this point only been installed in several different locations in California.  The list of early adopters reads like a who’s who of Fortune 500 and privately held companies that includes Adobe, AT&T, Bank of America, BD, Caltech, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Enterprises, eBay, FedEx, Fireman's Fund, Google, JMB Realty, Kaiser Permanente. NTT Communications, The Ratkovich Company, Sharks Ice, Staples, Sutter Home Winery, and Walmart.  So what is all the hubbub about?

Blooms energy provider can be powered by many different types of methane (natural gas) that include biofuels from plant or animal waste, anaerobic digesters used in water treatment purification and landfill gas, (all of which are major green house gas producers) in fact methane is 23 times more concentrated than CO2 as a green house gas by the EPA.

Another major advantage over other Solid Oxide Fuel Cell manufactures is its modular- plug and play or (drop and go) ability.  Unlike others the Bloom Box does not require large amounts of water to cool the system, a major aspect of others systems, nor does it require large rectifying or transformer applications to supply energy to the grid, which is included as part of the module, lastly the modular configuration allows for much smaller site footprints, requiring an area about the size of a normal parking space for each unit, much smaller than other fuel cells or typical alternative energy solar or wind applications.

One advantage that has received little press is the ability to use existing infrastructures of natural gas that can be transformed easily to alternative sources such as those discussed earlier, thereby providing an early market catalyst to transition to bio-fuels and anaerobic producers without the need for large or costly incentives.

Here is a list of other benefits given by the Bloom Company (reprinted with permission from Bloom Energy.

Bloom has a Broader Vision
Historically, businesses have been required to install many different energy technologies to address all their energy needs. To ensure power reliability, they purchased costly backup solutions. For increased power quality, they purchased power conditioning equipment. If they simply wanted clean power, they installed solar panels or purchased Renewable Energy Credits. All individual solutions that solve individual problems.

Bloom is Different

Bloom Energy's versatile fuel cell technology is essentially a flexible energy platform, providing multiple benefits simultaneously for a wide range of applications. In addition to clean, reliable, affordable electricity, Bloom customers can realize a multitude of other advantages:

• Carbon Sequestration: The electrochemical reaction occurring within Bloom Energy systems generates electricity, heat, some H2O, and pure CO2. Traditionally, the most costly aspect of carbon sequestration is separating the CO2 from the other effluents. The pure CO2 emission allows for easy and cost-effective carbon sequestration from the Bloom systems.

• Reverse Backup: Businesses often purchase generators, uninterruptible power supplies and other expensive backup applications that sit idle 99% of the time, while they purchase their electricity from the grid as their primary source. The Bloom solution allows customers to flip that paradigm, by using the Energy Server as their primary power, and only purchasing electricity from the grid to supplement the output when necessary. Increased asset utilization leads to dramatically improved ROI for Bloom Energy's customers.

• Time to Power: The ease of placing Bloom Energy Servers across a broad variety of geographies and customer segments allows systems to be installed quickly, on demand, without the added complexity of cumbersome combined heat and power applications or large space requirements of solar. These systems' environmental footprint enables them to be exempt from local air permitting requirements, thus streamlining the approval process. Fast installation simply requires a concrete pad, a fuel source, and an internet connection.

• DC Power: Bloom systems natively produce DC power, which provides an elegant solution to efficiently power DC data centers and/or be the plug-and-play provider for DC charging stations for electric vehicles.

• Hydrogen Production: Bloom's technology, with its NASA roots, can be used to generate electricity and hydrogen. Coupled with intermittent renewable resources like solar or wind, Bloom’s future systems will produce and store hydrogen to enable a 24 hour renewable solution and provide a distributed hydrogen fueling infrastructure for hydrogen powered vehicles.

Here at E3 Wise we are very excited by the fact that Bloom is finally moving outside the state of California.  Up until now the small amount of production has required keeping instillations in California to recoup both the federal and state incentives.  Now with the increase in production and number of already installed products Bloom will be able to partner with companies in states with Renewable Portfolio Credits to bring this technology to a much wider market all over the United States.

Also because the Bloom Box uses much cheaper catalyst materials that eliminate things like platinum and expensive metals and use low cost materials such as sand in cell construction the cost of production should continue to drop as production increases, meaning that wide spread adoption in the market place will be much simpler that other alternative energy applications. Several publications have pointed out that Fuel Cells are one of the most expensive forms of alternative energy.  However because of Blooms ability to eliminate costly materials like the ones listed above, Bloom breaks the mold in this regard and is there for on a competitive level with other current alternative energy technologies such as solar, wind and bio-fuels.

From the Technology Desk of Environmental Power & Water Generation and E3 Wise,

This is Jeff Moore wishing you all a clean, sustainable, and renewable energy future.

Health, Happiness and Success.

[artistry]

This is certainly a great report, on the progress being made by Apple, also all of the other companies that are included in the report. Very impressive information. The cost containment of the Bloom Box is a win for the companies. The price should continue to drop, as more and more companies get on board, with the technology as mentioned in essence, in the article.

[steph84]

Excited to see new improvements with the use of natural gas. I can't wait to see what things this facility develops.