Posted on 02/22/2010 4:36:25 AM PST by MindBender26
(CBS) In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that's inexpensive and clean, with no emissions. Well over 100 start-ups in Silicon Valley are working on it, and one of them, Bloom Energy, is about to make public its invention: a little power plant-in-a-box they want to put literally in your backyard.
You'll generate your own electricity with the box and it'll be wireless. The idea is to one day replace the big power plants and transmission line grid, the way the laptop moved in on the desktop and cell phones supplanted landlines.
It has a lot of smart people believing and buzzing, even though the company has been unusually secretive - until now.
K.R. Sridhar invited "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl for a first look at the innards of the Bloom box that he has been toiling on for nearly a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
At its core, it is a new, quantum-leap more-efficient fuel cell that is built with inexpensive components.
Mr. Bloom's units have been quietly powering large office buildings of Google and Ebay in California for years. Heavy hitters on the Board.
Could reduce need for POL imports dramatically.
Time to read/watch whole story is worth it.
The EPA would disagree. "Polutant" CO2 is released. And that vicious "water vapor" as well.
It is a fuel cell. Water is the final product.
I’ve long said, and believed, that if you could find an energy source that was 100% non-polluting (depending on how you define that), and harnessed the energy of a thousand suns in a device the size of a battery, the left would find a way to destroy it or restrict its use. They DON’T WANT us to be free, and energy restrictions are one of the means they use to achieve that.
Is this the same outfit that makes those 200MPG carbureators?
Given the stealthiness, we were surprised when Sridhar showed us - for the very first time - how he makes the "secret sauce" of his fuel cell on the cheap.
He said he bakes sand and cuts it(power cells) into little squares that are turned into a ceramic. Then he coats it with green and black "inks" that he developed. Sridhar told Stahl there is a secret formula. "And you take that and you apply that. You paint that on either side of this white ceramic to get a green layer and a black layer. And…that's it.
secret formula=pixie dust=scam. Sorry, ain't buying it.
I recall a similarly researched piece on 60 minutes about cold fusion some years ago...years later found to be a fabrication.
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Well heck. I do the same thing to beer (sort of).
Bump to read later
The systems running on landfill waste gasses would necessarily require more waste put in a landfill to maintain it's fuel supply.
That should go over well.
Anytime I hear some company wants to put a box in every yard throughout the world I get very skeptical. Not saying this box doesn’t work. Just saying whatever makes it work could probably be used in a way that wouldn’t require having millions of boxes all over the place.
Silly man.......you really believe they want a solution?
>http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE58H5TM20090918<
“They” are anti-industrialist, anti-American, population control freaks!
Nope, but a scam breakthrough most likely
incredible story
Literally.
Not all fuel cells are hydrogen/oxygen. One fuel they have been using is natural gas. So CO2 will be produced along with water.
Four units have been powering a Google datacenter for 18 months. They use natural gas, but half as much as would be required for a traditional power plant.
seems like wnehever the ecopnomy tanks, or gas prices rise, all sorts of crackpots crawl out of the woodwork to soak the gullible.
ping
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