10 ms·

Adobe Installs 1.2 MW of Bloom Boxes—Cheaper Than Grid Power

61 points by rahooligan 16y ago

ck2 16y ago
I first saw Bloom Boxes on 60 Minutes, I think. Fascinating stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6DLyruTqHI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6DLyruTqHI
javanix 16y ago
"The price includes maintenance, fuel and the amortized cost over the operative life of the fuel cell (ten years), along with the 30 percent federal tax credit and the California incentives available for companies that use the device." While still an improvement, without the 30% subsidies the rate would shoot up to ~$.11. Always important to keep subsidies in mind when dealing with new large-scale tech like this.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  As I read the sentence, it would be $0.11 plus whatever's in there from California's incentives. It looks to me like the 30% only refers to the federal subsidy.
  - enjo 16y ago
    Ya.. it seems like a rather marginal savings really (without the credit).
    - cwan 16y ago
      This in itself is remarkable. Even if costs are at parity, this is still amazing given that the technology is continuing to improve / scale. I'd be curious / suspicious as to the discount rate they are using to calculate the present value of long term costs - this is where they can manipulate the numbers in their favor.
  - uvdiv 16y ago
    The last link in the article seems to answer this: "A 100-kilowatt Bloom server array costs around $700,000 to $800,000, or $7,500 a kilowatt, after incentives that cover around 50 percent of the costs" http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-which-one-is-best/ http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-...
- fragmede 16y ago
  I can't tell if these rates are current, but: http://www.pge.com/about/news/topics/ratereduction.shtml http://www.pge.com/about/news/topics/ratereduction.shtml
- amalcon 16y ago
  Assuming, of course, that PG&E doesn't get any kind of subsidy itself. This is almost certainly not the case. I can't find directly comparable data; the closest I could find was something[1] from the U.S. department of energy that claims a 2007 allocation of about $10 billion to areas other than research, end use, and conservation. If you believe Wikipedia's figures[2] of 29 PWh in 2005 and assume that 2005 and 2007 are similar enough to compare, that's about $0.36 per kilowatt hour in subsidies. If we assume that PG&E is typical, it implies that they're already charging $0.36 less than their "true costs" as a result of federal subsidies. It's an extremely rough figure, and I suspect a proper breakdown would give a much lower number, but it does demonstrate that removing the effect of subsidies is not so simple. edit: Helps if I actually include citations. [1]http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.... [2]https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_in_the...
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  The 30% is only for the initial cost (amortized). So it wouldn't apply to maintenance and fuel. So probably not as bad as it seems.
- Roboprog 16y ago
  Hell, I would love to get some extra electricity at home for $0.11. Do they make a 5 kW cell? There are more than 2 people at home, and we often go over PG&E's "baseline". Electric water heater, etc. My marginal cost for the extra kwh's is $0.30, and often $0.40 for the last little bit. Having something (out here in the hills) to spit out some electricity for (T.C.O) $0.15 / kwh would save me money.
bakbak 16y ago
This is by far one of the most disruptive innovation ... also because all the energy, utilities and power companies got panicked as they might go out of business but were calmed down as they would either get license to the technology OR sell those energy servers and/or also supply other input energy that is required (such as bio-gas, methane, natural gas etc.)
- ck2 16y ago
  Hopefully they won't lobby politicians to crush Bloom out of existence. Many power companies are owned by city/county governments aren't they? So that's a political danger.
  - bakbak 16y ago
    that was danger before - hopefully there won't be any accident/disaster from existing installed boxes - also John Doer (the VC) of this company is one of the most powerful lobbyist himself and they did a fantastic job by keeping this secret (until recently) and in the mean time they used all their high-profile contacts within various industries to install those energy boxes and get super-positive reviews , so by doing this they edged-out all other lobbyist ..
- uvdiv 16y ago
  >also because all the energy, utilities and power companies got panicked as they might go out of business... I don't think the gas utilities would mind customers buying twice as much gas. Nor would the oil industry supermajors mind a new market buying their products and stamping them with "green" branding.
johnohara 16y ago
Reliability, not cost, is the primary issue. The transport grid nationwide is in serious need of repair and upgrading. The move toward owning one's power generation at a time when the state is issuing IOU's makes business sense. Perhaps it's a hedge against concerns over what they perceive the utilities must do in the next 25 years to keep the lights on.
- lsc 16y ago
  that was my thought. I mean, if I was considering provisioning these in my data centre, I'd set them up as the primary power source, while provisioning enough grid capacity to work as my backup power source. hell, that way I could choose grid power vs. the fuel cell power based on what the spot price of fuel looks like. When costing it out, I'd compare it to the cost of running on primary grid power plus the cost of buying and maintaining a backup battery + diesel generator system, and those costs are substantial, so yeah, these things sound very interesting, in a few years, for applications where redundant power is called for. Of course, I don't know how the cost numbers would work out; Right now, I pay "retail" for my data centre space, and I probably eat around, 10Kw in power (plus cooling, so that might be closer to 20-30Kw total. at this scale, in someone else's data centre, your cooling costs are rolled into your power costs.) but certainly, if it's at parity with grid power, the fact that it's redundant, in that a grid failure won't take it out, is a pretty big plus that's worth a substantial capital investment.
  - johnohara 16y ago
    Few people know that in Las Vegas, cogeneration is essential. MGM Mirage owns the Grand, Luxor, Bellagio, Mirage and now the City Center. They do their best to provide their own power or at least provide complete backup capability in the event of an outage. The new City Center development has its own 8.5 megawatt generating facility. http://www.energytimes.com/pages/departments/1002/earthmatters1002.html http://www.energytimes.com/pages/departments/1002/earthmatte... Most people think all that glitz comes from the Hoover Dam, but I think they they generate a lot of it themselves.
- easp 16y ago
dochtman 16y ago
So is this better for the environment, or just cheaper? The article doesn't seem to mention it.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- btilly 16y ago
  Methane is a horrible greenhouse gas. CO2 is a bad one. So removing methane and getting CO2 is a good thing. However if you start actively producing methane for use in something like this, then the greenhouse benefits are negative.
  - sbierwagen 16y ago
    If you're buying methane in quantity, then you're buying fossil natural gas. As I like to point out in every HN post on Bloom Energy, these may be fuel cells, but they're still burning fossil fuels.
    - spydez 16y ago
      Adobe's burning bio-methane from a landfill, not fossil fuels.
    - ecuzzillo 16y ago
      Sure, but they're not putting any really bad shit in the atmosphere, which is something.
- uvdiv 16y ago
  It's both less efficient and more expensive than burning natural gas in a turbine. Its data sheet claims 52% efficiency [1], while current generation CCGTs are 60% efficient (e.g. [2]). Its commercial price is $7,000-$8,000/kW(e) [3]. This is ten times the cost of CCGT power plants, at ~$700-800/kWe (e.g. [4,5]). (This does NOT mean the amortized cents/kWh cost is 10x higher -- most of the final cost is the gas fuel). Ref [5] is particularly relevant, it's financial estimates from California's state energy commission. edited to add: According to the link [6] in the OP article, the commercial price of the Bloom Box already includes state rebates, and the real cost is twice as high ($14,000-$16,000/kWe). It also reports comparable costs for competing fuel cells ($11,200/kWe for ClearEdge, and $30,000/kWe for Panasonic's really tiny fuel cell). "A 100-kilowatt Bloom server array costs around $700,000 to $800,000, or $7,500 a kilowatt, after incentives that cover around 50 percent of the costs." [1] http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/ http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/ [2] A modern CCGT turbine: http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-generation/gas-turbines/sgt5-8000h.htm http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-generation/gas-tur... (5,687 BTU/kWh <--> 60.0% efficiency) [3] http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16189290 http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16189290 [4] (same turbine as [2]) http://www.power-technology.com/projects/irsching/ http://www.power-technology.com/projects/irsching/ [5] CCGT costs in table 14: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/C... [6] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-which-one-is-best/ http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-...
zabraxias 16y ago
We have one of these at the eBay/PayPal campus in San Jose. It apparently powers almost the entire green building and I haven't heard of any issues yet - though I imagine the setup here is recent anyway. I am all for green so it's an awesome initiative and I bet the government subsidies don't hurt either.
VladRussian 16y ago
things like this remind me about backyard steel furnaces of the Great Leap Forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace
kwantam 16y ago
Over/under on the time until someone decides to sue Adobe to force them to sell the energy to PG&E and buy it back at an increased rate the same way homeowners are forced to with their PV panels?
some1else 16y ago
If Adobe Application Installer was optimized, it would reduce the power consumption worldwide. Seriously, Master Suite takes longer to install than OSX Leopard. And just imagine the power savings of a lightweight Acrobat reader :-P
easp 16y ago
I was really intrigued by Bloom, but when I did a little digging, I realized that the only thing revolutionary about them was they hype. At best, their tech is an evolutionary improvement over other fuel cells. Other fuel suppliers are targeting the same applications with similar efficiencies and price-points. Furthermore, as others have pointed out, the claimed efficiencies assume full use can be made from the waste heat, and their overall efficiency is less than a gas turbine plant. Their overall capital efficiency may be lower still since. And to those waving hands about the expense of maintaining the electrical grid, get real. Big stream power plants are much more energy (and capital) efficient than these fuel cells, or gas turbine plants. It may that the efficiency of these things go up and the costs come down enough as volumes increase that the economics shift, but for now, providing base load through the grid via high efficiency power plants is going to be cheaper than why Bloom or their less hyped competitors offer. I think the real appeal of these things is that they give big customers a hedge against more gaming of the markets by the electrical generation and transmission companies. I doubt any of them are eager to become completely dependent the natural gas producers and pipeline companies either.

61 points by rahooligan 16y ago

ck2 16y ago

I first saw Bloom Boxes on 60 Minutes, I think. Fascinating stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6DLyruTqHI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6DLyruTqHI

javanix 16y ago

"The price includes maintenance, fuel and the amortized cost over the operative life of the fuel cell (ten years), along with the 30 percent federal tax credit and the California incentives available for companies that use the device." While still an improvement, without the 30% subsidies the rate would shoot up to ~$.11. Always important to keep subsidies in mind when dealing with new large-scale tech like this.

CWuestefeld 16y ago
As I read the sentence, it would be $0.11 plus whatever's in there from California's incentives. It looks to me like the 30% only refers to the federal subsidy.
- enjo 16y ago
  Ya.. it seems like a rather marginal savings really (without the credit).
  - cwan 16y ago
    This in itself is remarkable. Even if costs are at parity, this is still amazing given that the technology is continuing to improve / scale. I'd be curious / suspicious as to the discount rate they are using to calculate the present value of long term costs - this is where they can manipulate the numbers in their favor.
- uvdiv 16y ago
  The last link in the article seems to answer this: "A 100-kilowatt Bloom server array costs around $700,000 to $800,000, or $7,500 a kilowatt, after incentives that cover around 50 percent of the costs" http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-which-one-is-best/ http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-...
fragmede 16y ago
I can't tell if these rates are current, but: http://www.pge.com/about/news/topics/ratereduction.shtml http://www.pge.com/about/news/topics/ratereduction.shtml
amalcon 16y ago
Assuming, of course, that PG&E doesn't get any kind of subsidy itself. This is almost certainly not the case. I can't find directly comparable data; the closest I could find was something[1] from the U.S. department of energy that claims a 2007 allocation of about $10 billion to areas other than research, end use, and conservation. If you believe Wikipedia's figures[2] of 29 PWh in 2005 and assume that 2005 and 2007 are similar enough to compare, that's about $0.36 per kilowatt hour in subsidies. If we assume that PG&E is typical, it implies that they're already charging $0.36 less than their "true costs" as a result of federal subsidies. It's an extremely rough figure, and I suspect a proper breakdown would give a much lower number, but it does demonstrate that removing the effect of subsidies is not so simple. edit: Helps if I actually include citations. [1]http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.... [2]https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_in_the...
ojbyrne 16y ago
The 30% is only for the initial cost (amortized). So it wouldn't apply to maintenance and fuel. So probably not as bad as it seems.
Roboprog 16y ago
Hell, I would love to get some extra electricity at home for $0.11. Do they make a 5 kW cell? There are more than 2 people at home, and we often go over PG&E's "baseline". Electric water heater, etc. My marginal cost for the extra kwh's is $0.30, and often $0.40 for the last little bit. Having something (out here in the hills) to spit out some electricity for (T.C.O) $0.15 / kwh would save me money.

bakbak 16y ago

This is by far one of the most disruptive innovation ... also because all the energy, utilities and power companies got panicked as they might go out of business but were calmed down as they would either get license to the technology OR sell those energy servers and/or also supply other input energy that is required (such as bio-gas, methane, natural gas etc.)

ck2 16y ago
Hopefully they won't lobby politicians to crush Bloom out of existence. Many power companies are owned by city/county governments aren't they? So that's a political danger.
- bakbak 16y ago
  that was danger before - hopefully there won't be any accident/disaster from existing installed boxes - also John Doer (the VC) of this company is one of the most powerful lobbyist himself and they did a fantastic job by keeping this secret (until recently) and in the mean time they used all their high-profile contacts within various industries to install those energy boxes and get super-positive reviews , so by doing this they edged-out all other lobbyist ..
uvdiv 16y ago
>also because all the energy, utilities and power companies got panicked as they might go out of business... I don't think the gas utilities would mind customers buying twice as much gas. Nor would the oil industry supermajors mind a new market buying their products and stamping them with "green" branding.

johnohara 16y ago

Reliability, not cost, is the primary issue. The transport grid nationwide is in serious need of repair and upgrading. The move toward owning one's power generation at a time when the state is issuing IOU's makes business sense. Perhaps it's a hedge against concerns over what they perceive the utilities must do in the next 25 years to keep the lights on.

lsc 16y ago
that was my thought. I mean, if I was considering provisioning these in my data centre, I'd set them up as the primary power source, while provisioning enough grid capacity to work as my backup power source. hell, that way I could choose grid power vs. the fuel cell power based on what the spot price of fuel looks like. When costing it out, I'd compare it to the cost of running on primary grid power plus the cost of buying and maintaining a backup battery + diesel generator system, and those costs are substantial, so yeah, these things sound very interesting, in a few years, for applications where redundant power is called for. Of course, I don't know how the cost numbers would work out; Right now, I pay "retail" for my data centre space, and I probably eat around, 10Kw in power (plus cooling, so that might be closer to 20-30Kw total. at this scale, in someone else's data centre, your cooling costs are rolled into your power costs.) but certainly, if it's at parity with grid power, the fact that it's redundant, in that a grid failure won't take it out, is a pretty big plus that's worth a substantial capital investment.
- johnohara 16y ago
  Few people know that in Las Vegas, cogeneration is essential. MGM Mirage owns the Grand, Luxor, Bellagio, Mirage and now the City Center. They do their best to provide their own power or at least provide complete backup capability in the event of an outage. The new City Center development has its own 8.5 megawatt generating facility. http://www.energytimes.com/pages/departments/1002/earthmatters1002.html http://www.energytimes.com/pages/departments/1002/earthmatte... Most people think all that glitz comes from the Hoover Dam, but I think they they generate a lot of it themselves.
easp 16y ago

dochtman 16y ago

So is this better for the environment, or just cheaper? The article doesn't seem to mention it.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
btilly 16y ago
Methane is a horrible greenhouse gas. CO2 is a bad one. So removing methane and getting CO2 is a good thing. However if you start actively producing methane for use in something like this, then the greenhouse benefits are negative.
- sbierwagen 16y ago
  If you're buying methane in quantity, then you're buying fossil natural gas. As I like to point out in every HN post on Bloom Energy, these may be fuel cells, but they're still burning fossil fuels.
  - spydez 16y ago
    Adobe's burning bio-methane from a landfill, not fossil fuels.
  - ecuzzillo 16y ago
    Sure, but they're not putting any really bad shit in the atmosphere, which is something.
uvdiv 16y ago
It's both less efficient and more expensive than burning natural gas in a turbine. Its data sheet claims 52% efficiency [1], while current generation CCGTs are 60% efficient (e.g. [2]). Its commercial price is $7,000-$8,000/kW(e) [3]. This is ten times the cost of CCGT power plants, at ~$700-800/kWe (e.g. [4,5]). (This does NOT mean the amortized cents/kWh cost is 10x higher -- most of the final cost is the gas fuel). Ref [5] is particularly relevant, it's financial estimates from California's state energy commission. edited to add: According to the link [6] in the OP article, the commercial price of the Bloom Box already includes state rebates, and the real cost is twice as high ($14,000-$16,000/kWe). It also reports comparable costs for competing fuel cells ($11,200/kWe for ClearEdge, and $30,000/kWe for Panasonic's really tiny fuel cell). "A 100-kilowatt Bloom server array costs around $700,000 to $800,000, or $7,500 a kilowatt, after incentives that cover around 50 percent of the costs." [1] http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/ http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/ [2] A modern CCGT turbine: http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-generation/gas-turbines/sgt5-8000h.htm http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-generation/gas-tur... (5,687 BTU/kWh <--> 60.0% efficiency) [3] http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16189290 http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_16189290 [4] (same turbine as [2]) http://www.power-technology.com/projects/irsching/ http://www.power-technology.com/projects/irsching/ [5] CCGT costs in table 14: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/CEC-200-2007-011-SD.PDF http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/C... [6] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-which-one-is-best/ http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-...

zabraxias 16y ago

We have one of these at the eBay/PayPal campus in San Jose. It apparently powers almost the entire green building and I haven't heard of any issues yet - though I imagine the setup here is recent anyway. I am all for green so it's an awesome initiative and I bet the government subsidies don't hurt either.

VladRussian 16y ago

things like this remind me about backyard steel furnaces of the Great Leap Forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace

kwantam 16y ago

Over/under on the time until someone decides to sue Adobe to force them to sell the energy to PG&E and buy it back at an increased rate the same way homeowners are forced to with their PV panels?

some1else 16y ago

If Adobe Application Installer was optimized, it would reduce the power consumption worldwide. Seriously, Master Suite takes longer to install than OSX Leopard. And just imagine the power savings of a lightweight Acrobat reader :-P

easp 16y ago

I was really intrigued by Bloom, but when I did a little digging, I realized that the only thing revolutionary about them was they hype. At best, their tech is an evolutionary improvement over other fuel cells. Other fuel suppliers are targeting the same applications with similar efficiencies and price-points. Furthermore, as others have pointed out, the claimed efficiencies assume full use can be made from the waste heat, and their overall efficiency is less than a gas turbine plant. Their overall capital efficiency may be lower still since. And to those waving hands about the expense of maintaining the electrical grid, get real. Big stream power plants are much more energy (and capital) efficient than these fuel cells, or gas turbine plants. It may that the efficiency of these things go up and the costs come down enough as volumes increase that the economics shift, but for now, providing base load through the grid via high efficiency power plants is going to be cheaper than why Bloom or their less hyped competitors offer. I think the real appeal of these things is that they give big customers a hedge against more gaming of the markets by the electrical generation and transmission companies. I doubt any of them are eager to become completely dependent the natural gas producers and pipeline companies either.