Oh yeah, I suppose a lot more moving parts in a mechanical generator, I can see it ending up more reliable than a generator. Seems unlikely to be more reliable

Oh yeah, I suppose a lot more moving parts in a mechanical generator, I can see it ending up more reliable than a generator. Seems unlikely to be more reliable than a battery backup system but I bet those battery sizes aren't nearly big enough (having lived quite a weird life and having actually researched industrial battery backup systems from GE too for some reason). I can definitely see it making sense. Main downside I'd see is that if you're talking SF, I bet you the next earthquake takes out natural gas. If it's something important like a hospital that might be reason enough to have a big diesel generator since I know diesel fuel is so dense and you can ship it by truck if you have to. I don't really know how important your datacenter is in a disaster =) I mean, honestly I mostly looked hard at Bloom before they left stealth mode but I kinda researched the same kind of stuff that they did in grad school and I'd be totally shocked if they were operating under 350C. Probably more like 500-600C. If they had a major technical innovation I would imagine it's around decreasing the temperature that iron is catalytically active at but the solid electrolyte still needs to be hot enough to have good ionic conductivity. My stuff from ages ago on this vague sort of thing: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/59228 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/59228