This morning, eBay hosted the unveiling of a new, state-of-the-art technology at its PayPal campus in San Jose. It’s called the Bloom Energy Server (or “Bloom Box”), and some are saying it will revolutionize the world.
Developed by Bloom Energy Corporation, the Bloom Energy Server is an SUV-sized box that corporations install outside their buildings to generate their own electricity from almost any fuel source. Bloom Energy introduced its groundbreaking technology at eBay Inc. headquarters along with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, General Colin Powell, and several of its early customers.
The Bloom Box was previewed on CBS 60 Minutes this past Sunday that included an on-location interview with eBay CEO, John Donahoe, as he showed the futuristic servers eBay has had in place for months now:
Fuel cells are effectively skinny batteries that can run at all times. Bloom fuel cells work by feeding air and fuel–often natural gas or biogas, but even energy from solar panels–into its system, which converts the two into electricity that can be used by homes, offices or even cities. What makes these fuel cells so appealing is how inexpensive yet efficient they can be. According to Bloom Energy, a stack of fuel cells the size of a brick would be good enough to power an average US home.
Unlike other fuel cell types, Bloom’s technology takes ordinary beach sand, bakes it and compresses it into a ceramic disc about the size of a Polaroid image. Special inks are applied to either side of the disc where chemical reactions will take place that will ultimately create energy.
In order to power a larger facility, hundreds of those discs get stacked upon each other and go into a box the size of an SUV. At eBay, five of these boxes were installed just behind the LEED-Gold certified San Jose North campus nearly nine months ago. In the first six months of having the system installed and running, it generated 2 million kWh of electricity, or enough to power over 150 average U.S. homes for over a year.
“eBay believes in the power of our business model to make a real difference in the world, and that includes how we embrace innovation to reduce our carbon footprint,” said eBay Inc. CEO, John Donahoe. “When Bloom came to us, it was an easy decision to become an early-adopter of their cutting-edge new technology. As a result, we’re meeting financial and environmental goals with the project while fueling a more energy efficient global marketplace. That’s good for us, our customers and the planet.”
According to Bloom, customers like eBay who purchase Bloom’s systems can expect a 3-5 year payback on their capital investment from the energy cost savings. Depending on whether they are using a fossil or renewable fuel, they can also achieve a 40-100% reduction in their carbon footprint as compared with the U.S. grid. Customers announced today include Bank of America; The Coca-Cola Company; Cox Enterprises; eBay; FedEx Express; Google; Staples; and Walmart.
Since the first commercial customer installation in July 2008, Bloom’s Energy Servers have collectively produced more than 11 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, with CO2 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds – the equivalent of powering approximately 1,000 American homes for a year and planting one million trees.
I’ll be covering the live event this morning via Twitter. You can see the full Twitter conversation by searching the hashtag #BloomEnergy. Look for photos and video from the event shortly thereafter.
Cheers,
RBH
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