Hey Peachtree City and AR.....did you watch 60 Minutes? Well maybe you aren't an Andy Rooney loyalist but just in case you missed it, there was an interesting interview by Leslie Stahl on a fuel cell start up company called "Bloom Energy." In fact the San Jose-based company is having a launch party on Wednesday. There has been quite a bit of stealth around this company but for some reason they decided to unveil and reveal its secret on 60 Minutes.
So what's all the fuss about? How about maybe the next biggest breakthrough for clean energy? What we did find out was that the Bloom Energy company had created the "Bloom Box" proposed to replace our current grids. The box is a refrigerator-sized fuel cell that can produce energy from almost any fuel source
including biofuels, natural gas, and fossil fuel by mixing them with oxygen to create a chemical reaction. Bloom Boxes would eventually replace our power plants because they can literally produce electricity right on site.
Additionally, during the 60 Minutes piece there were interviews with Bloom's CEO K.R. Sirdhar who is an actual aerospace engineer! His concept was developed initially to create oxygen on Mars. Sirdhar stated that he felt confident that in the next 5 to 10 years every home would have a Bloom Box. An astonished Stahl asked what seemed to be the next logical question. "What would be the cost? Sirdhar smiled and replied,"...less than $3,000 per home."
Okay....they got my full attention now! But who in the heck is the capital behind this behemoth potential life changing, Nobel Prize winning project? Well, it seems that it is the same guys that saw the potential in a small promising company back in 1999. KPC&B was part of the investment capital team that sunk $25 million into a company called....GOOGLE! This Silicon Valley venture capital firm known as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is a major investor in the company and Bloom Energy is the company's first cleantech investment.
What kind of investment was required for this project? Bloom's CEO K.R. Sridhar confirmed on 60 minutes that rumors about the company raising $400 million were "in the ballpark." John Doerr of KPC&B barely flinched when Stahl asked about the size of his company's investment in Bloom. Oh, did I forget to mention that Colin Powell now sits on the Board of Director. Can you say....cha-ching!
But wait.....there's more!! The Bloom Boxes are actually being tested by some pretty large companies. GOOGLE has been testing the boxes for 18 months. EBAY has had the boxes for 9 months and claims to have saved $100,000 in energy costs! The list of Bloom Box recipients trying out these fuel cells includes Wal-Mart, Staples, and FEDx. Just in case you didn't notice...all these are California-based companies that can also take advantage of tax credits. So with that being said, the cost of these boxes ($700,000 to $800,000) have been cut almost in half.
So what about the byproduct(s) of this invention like greenhouse gases? I don't know and there has been little said but it would seem like there are more efficiencies than what we have right now. It also should be noted that I'm not really sure if the box out in our yards will read Bloom energy. I'm thinking more like GE!!!
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