The Bloom Box a new kind of energy production device is to be unveiled very soon. With over $400 million US dollars in investments and investors like Vinod Khosla and John Doerr this start up is hot. Really Hot.
What makes this startup hot? Why is it important ? How it could change the status quo are few of the questions we will try to address in this article
What is Bloom Box
Bloom Energy is the company behind the Bloom Box. http://www.bloomenergy.com. The Bloom Box is based on fuel cell technology and is capable of generating enough power for 1 US household with a box the size of a bread loaf. The same box could serve 2 European households or 4-6 Asian households. The box costs about $700,000USD today but Sridhar expects the cost reduce to about $3000 per household in 5-10 years. Companies like Ebay and Google have been testing it out for some time now . Ebay has saved over $100,000 in energy costs over the past nine months.
Why is this an Important Development
The generation and consumption of energy has followed the hub and spoke model for long time. Energy is produced in a far off places and distributed over hundreds of miles to the point of consumption over a grid. This model has some inherent issues. There are huge power losses in distribution. There is dependence on the grid and the individual consumers of energy are completely depend on it. And when there is a problem with the grid the whole infrastructure comes down. An alternate solution could be distributed generation where consumers of energy can generate their own . The Bloom box brings the promise of being able to let users generate their own energy. This is a huge paradigm shift in the way energy has been approached over the years. And make his an important development
How it could change the status quo?
Energy has been known for a few large companies that control the energy. The space is not open for smaller players and alternative sources have been a pipe dream and have not gone beyond the initial test phases . The Bloom box and other such inventions could change all this with users being able to generate their own power. This could also change market and allow smaller companies to enter and create their own versions of the bloom box.
Good luck Bloom Energy !
