Adobe Installs 1.2 MW of Bloom Boxes—Cheaper Than Grid Power | Hacker News Reader

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

greentechmedia.com

61 pointsrahooligan36 comments

"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.

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.

Ya.. it seems like a rather marginal savings really (without the credit).

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.

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-...

I can't tell if these rates are current, but: http://www.pge.com/about/news/topics/ratereduction.shtml

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....

[2]https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_in_the...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/earthmatte...

Most people think all that glitz comes from the Hoover Dam, but I think they they generate a lot of it themselves.

Or a hedge against a replay of the Enron-era.

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.)

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.

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 ..

>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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Adobe's burning bio-methane from a landfill, not fossil fuels.

Sure, but they're not putting any really bad shit in the atmosphere, which is something.

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/

[2] A modern CCGT turbine: 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

[4] (same turbine as [2]) http://www.power-technology.com/projects/irsching/

[5] CCGT costs in table 14: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-200-2007-011/C...

[6] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bloom-vs.-solar-...

Yeah I think this is more of a PR stunt than anything else. The technology has potential but at the current moment, but it isnt superior than what is out there. Biomass is green but there isnt enough of it available for cheap. So I think Bloom boxes will have to use natural gas (which isnt green) to scale.

I'm pretty skeptical about Bloom Energy, but it's not fair to compare the efficiency of a 375 MW gas turbine against a 100 kW fuel cell (assuming that customers care about local generation and aren't just looking for the cheapest power). Maybe you should compare against a microturbine.

>...but it's not fair to compare the efficiency of a 375 MW gas turbine against a 100 kW fuel cell

Why not, they are substitutes for each other.

>(assuming that customers care about local generation...

Why should they care about "local generation"?

It's all a very successfully executed PR stunt. Local generation only matters in places where electricity distribution is unreliable or nonexistent (such as shopping malls in India having diesel generators on site).

that's not true. a lot of energy is lost just trying to move electricity to another location (something like a factor of 2/3).

so having local power plants would mean power has far less distance to travel, meaning you don't have to produce as much.

Not true. Transmission losses are just 6.5% total.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/electricity_faqs.asp#electric_r...

For starters, you have to pay for the distribution of the energy from a massive gas turbine, including maintenance salaries, capital investment in the energy network, marketing, insurance of all of the above, interest on capital expenditure to build the turbine, etc etc etc. A Bloom Box's energy is consumed immediately where it is generated.

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

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?

I first saw Bloom Boxes on 60 Minutes, I think. Fascinating stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6DLyruTqHI

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