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The people at Google are no doubt hotshot software engineers, but how many of them are physicists/chemists I wonder. Has there been an independent scientific c
by motters 17y ago
The people at Google are no doubt hotshot software engineers, but how many of them are physicists/chemists I wonder. Has there been an independent scientific confirmation that the underlying mechanism of electricity generation is valid, and produces significant net energy gain? I very much doubt that.
Do we have anyone here on HN who can actually confirm that these devices have been installed at Google?
I've taken an interest in various energy generation ideas over the years, and a fair amount of hoaxing has always gone on. Sometimes the hoaxes are quite sophisticated an investors who like what they see but know little about physics end up being defrauded out of large amounts of money. From what I've seen in this article/video this raises all the classic red flags which you could expect from a hoax operation.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- gfodor 17y agoYes, the classic energy hoax of "marginal improvement over a well known and understood chemical process that obeys the laws of thermodynamics." I have a feeling you missed the part where they put hydrocarbons in one end.
- motters 17y agoI watched the rest of the video, and noticed the big gas pipeline. So whatever is going on here it's not clean energy - it's basically a generator burning fossil fuel or gas from waste decomposition as usual. It seems unlikely that individual homes or companies could produce enough decomposable waste products to generate the gas needed.
- grinich 17y agoGoogle does actually have a fair number of physicists.
- babycakes 17y agoFrom http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/02/22/google-using-bloom-box-but-not-in-data-center/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/02/22/googl... “These fuel cells aren’t powering any off-site data centers,” said a Google spokesperson. “Instead, Bloom fuel cells are powering a portion of Google’s energy needs at our headquarters right here in Mountain View. This is another on-site renewable energy source that we’re exploring to help power our facilities. We have a 400kW installation on Google’s main campus. Over the first 18 months the project has had 98% availability and delivered 3.8 million kWh of electricity.”