The promise of distributed power: the Bloom Box and more

At Future Exploration Network, one of our roles is to help clients understand the technologies that have the potential to dramatically disrupt existing industries and structures.

Distributed technologies which bring power and manufacturing to the local level, or even the home, definitely fall into that category. Modern economies are largely based on centralized power generation on an enormous scale, combined with power distribution networks taking that to the home.

For decades people have looked at the possibilities of fuel cells which allow homes or neighborhoods to generate their own power. Fuel cell manufacturer Bloom Energy , despite being largely in stealth mode, was named in the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers 2010 list. Last night CBS News ran a 13 minute segment (embedded below) devoted to Bloom Energy, suggesting it has the potential to transform how we use energy.

It is possible that Bloom Energy’s technology will prove the breakthrough required to make distributed energy possible. It may not fulfil its promise, either in the technology itself, the ability to scale, or being able to drive prices down sufficiently. However the progress made, together with the global attention, is certainly providing a major push to the widespread commercialization of fuel cells.

The implications of distributed power impact not just the power industry, but also automotive and transport, construction, and in particular urban planning. Companies in these sectors need to fully understand what rapid uptake of fuel cells could mean for them and how they should respond.

Another element of what I call ‘Distributed Everything’ is distributed manufacturing, potentially down to the home level. More on that another post.

http://peter.evans-greenwood.com/ Peter Evans-Greenwood

Unfortunately, I doubt that Bloom will change the world. Distributed and micro-generation solutions will be a huge boon in countries which have an unreliable power supply, in countries without an established electricity grid, or even as a greener alternative to the traditional diesel generation for fail-over. However, the technical and regulatory challenges of pumping power back into the grid are yet to be solved adequately for large scale distributed generation to take off. (Large scale injection of inverted DC into existing grids destabilises them, while existing metering regulation makes it hard — if not impossible — to meter exported power.)
What we need to do is rethink how we consume energy. Let’s move away from a demand driven approach, one defined by the imperative to supply enough power to fulfil aggregate demand. A smarter approach is to adopt a supply driven approach, focused on making the most of the limited amount of power available to us. Society shouldn’t need to spin up an expensive gas and polluting turbine just because you decided to turn on the XBox at the same time as the dishwasher.
Nor are Bloom first to market with a micro-generation solution (though first mover advantage does seem to be a myth), as folks like Open Energy have been working in this space for a while. There’s some nice solutions (usually based around a combined cycle stirling engine) for community generation (i.e. a shared CHAP generator at the end of the street) which are just waiting for the distribution and regulatory problems to sort themselves out.
Bloom is a nice is a nice bit of technology, but it’s a point solution in a world where we have bigger problems to solve.
r.
PEG
http://peter.evans-greenwood.com/ Peter Evans-Greenwood

Nice article on New Scientist on this:
Bloom didn’t start a fuel-cell revolution
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527505.600-bloom-didnt-start-a-fuelcell-revolution.html