K.R. Sridhar looks nervous. The CEO of Bloom Energy, the much-hyped fuel cell start-up, sits in a conference room preparing to show off his magical “Bloom Box” for the first time in public. The 49-year-old scientist-turned entrepreneur has raised $400 million in venture capital for his Sunnyvale, California company, but until now Sridhar has revealed almost nothing about what his company has actually produced since it launched eight years ago.
A fuel cell is a device that uses hydrogen (or hydrogen-rich fuel) and oxygen to create electricity. Fuel cells are more energy-efficient than combustion engines and the hydrogen used to power them can come from a variety of sources.
No other energy generation technology offers the combination of benefits that fuel cells do. In addition to low or zero emissions, benefits include high efficiency and reliability, multi-fuel capability, siting flexibility, durability, scalability and ease of maintenance. Fuel cells operate silently, so they reduce noise pollution as well as air pollution and the waste heat from a fuel cell can be used to provide hot water or space heating for a home or office.
Google told Fortune that it has a 400 kilowatt installation from Bloom at its headquarters in Mountain View, California. But the real test, analysts say, is whether Google feels confident enough to use Bloom boxes to power its vast server farms upon which its business depends.
K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, has said he hopes to see brick-sized energy servers powering homes within 10 years. The price: Somewhere south of $3,000, although it's unclear what the initial cost might be. Bloom Energy says its corporate customers will see a 3- to 5-year payback on their initial investment.
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