And yet, despite big promises, Sridhar’s boxes are highly unlikely to transform the grid in California, or anywhere else.

Hydrogen is a powerful fuel - indeed a frequent component in rocket fuel - but there exist numerous technical challenges preventing the creation of a working large-scale hydrogen economy. "Stop & Shop to convert 40 of its stores to microgrids in preparation for severe weather and power outages", http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/01/f28/fcto_2015_business_case_fuel_cells.pdf, "Tech Pioneers Who Will Change Your Life", "Bloom Box: What is it and how does it work? internal combustion engines, micro gas turbines, stirling engines or fuel cells. A home fuel cell or a residential fuel cell is an electrochemical cell used for primary or backup power generation, similar to larger industrial stationary fuel cells, but built at a smaller scale for residential use.

It raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding before going public in 2018. [28], The chemical reaction used to create energy in Bloom Energy products, Bloom Energy Servers stack small fuel cells to operate in concert. (A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson says it’s common to sell at a loss to build market share.) Under the Bloom Electrons service, customers sign 10-year contracts to purchase the electricity generated by Bloom Energy Servers while the company retains ownership of the fuel cells and responsibility for their maintenance.... 'We’re able to tell customers, ‘You don’t have to put any money up front, you pay only for the electrons you use and it’s good for your pocketbook and good for planet,’ ' [CEO K.R. No longer having to maintain and replace generators would reduce the break even period. Underscoring the sense that Bloom may be living on borrowed time are the exits of several executives and the pending retirement of its CFO.

The boxes, which it calls energy servers, emit a nearly pure stream of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, but they are supposed to make much less of it than traditional power plants and do so without generating lots of smog ingredients like nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxides. “Add in batteries and you can achieve similar reliability at far lower cost, with no carbon emissions.” Los Angeles has entered into a 25-year agreement to buy solar-plus-battery power at 2 cents per kwh.

[11] The capital cost is $7–8 per watt. The power plants of such vehicles convert the chemical energy of hydrogen to mechanical energy either by burning hydrogen in an internal combustion engine, or, more commonly, by reacting hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell to run electric motors. A Gerson Lehrman Group analyst wrote that GE dismantled its fuel cell group five years ago and Siemens almost dismantled theirs. [18].

These projects power homes, buildings, and vehicles. Current annual worldwide production of scandium is less than 2,000 kilograms. Forbes reporter since 1999. During power outages, our system continues to provide always-on power, enabling businesses to grow without disruption and meet sustainability goals. [10] USpatent application 20080261099  , assigned to Bloom Energy Corporation, says that the "electrolyte includes yttria stabilized zirconia and a scandia-stabilized zirconia, such as a scandia ceria stabilized zirconia".