If you thought solar panels were too expensive to put on your house, wait ’till you hear this one. Bloom Energy, a clean energy start-up in Silicon Valley, said “Hello world” yesterday, unveiling a rather revolutionary solid oxide fuel cell unit. If all goes to plan, it should be able to put your house completely off the grid. There’s a 60 Minutes spot after the jump.
The project started way back in 2001, intended for colonizing Mars. Each unit is about the size of a parking space, and can provide upwards of 100kW of power. It has also proven to be much cheaper and more efficient than most other “clean energy” options. You can power it with nearly any fuel you can think of. Bio fuels, natural gas, etc.
At $700K a unit, you probably won’t be seeing these things in your neighborhood for a while. Unless your neighborhood includes the campuses of some heavy-hitters like Google or eBay. But reports say that one of the main priorities for Bloom Energy is making these units affordable at a home-owner level.
Click over there for a much more detailed explanation of the tech behind it.
http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/player-dest.swf
[i4U News]