"Depending on whether they are using a fossil or renewable fuel as fuel for the SOFC, they can also achieve a 40-100% reduction in their carbon footprint as compared with the US grid."

This is interesting. A good EPA project would be to fund a municipal waste power station. Utilizing a varied waste stream to produce syngas which then fuels the SOFC. A pilot plant of this type would be very useful. I would imagine that Santa Monica would be a good testing ground.

A NOTE for Canadians: here is a gateway to profiting from a far less "dirty" resource than oil. Grow your NG industry, build pipelines, and hook up with CHP distributed power makers like Bloom. The sale of NG will be hailed as green compared to tar sands and you have tons of NG in the ground.

Bloom say their 100kW box cost 700 to 800k USD and that it is over 50% efficient meaning about 55%. This is not competitive with the efficiency and price of the best natural gas combined cycle plants that are 60% efficient (40% from gas turbine and another 20% from subsequent steam turbine) and cost as little as 100k USD per 100kW capacity.

Bloom also said they hope to develop a small 1000 Watt unit for household use in 5 to 10 years that they can sell for 3000 USD. That would be more interesting also because it could produce heat as well to the household. However, it is not a miracle company as it almost sounded like in 60 minutes. Plus where is the novelty? Many other companies are working on SOFCs.

I wish them good luck and hope they will make their household unit ahead of schedule.

Henrik:
Are your figures for MW scale installations? What can be achieved at the 100kW scale?

We need this in Alaska. Heating season is year round. We have trillions of cu ft of CH4. If we could get the pipelines built to where the people live, individual or neighborhodd CHP providing electricity and hot water would make a lot of sense and be much greener than many current solutions.

David I just used the 100kW price to make it comparable to the Bloom unit. The most efficient combined cycle units are typically large 500MW plants. They are currently the least costly power plants on the market in terms of capital costs. In the future vehicle to grid technology may change that. For instance, each GM Volt has a 50kW generator or so that is already paid for. If large numbers of such vehicles are parked and connected to the grid they could supply peak power cost effectively because the power plant the is already paid for by the vehicle owner.

Wow!! What a great opportunity. I missed my chance to short Ballard, when that Hindenburg exploded. Can't wait for the IPO.

What these and other SOFCs should work on is a residential power unit capable of 10kW output. The surplus heat can warm the building and its hot water and chill air in hot weather.

There are many other benefits to RPUs. With enough distribution they can reduce grid demand by 1/3rd. They eliminate transmission wire, towers, substations, transformers and maintenance on all. They increase energy security by avoiding easily targeted central power plants. Improve air quality over coal, and lower CO2.

Best of all is the opportunity to eliminate power lines above and below ground. These things are a freakin hazard to civilization. Burying high voltage lines is stupidly expensive.

AND jobs. Someone has to manufacture, install and maintain these RPUs. Energy companies convert from central electric power to distributed NG or syngas.

Once there is a large installed base of flex-fuel SOFCs - new alternative fuel (e.g. H2)sources can come online.

Less dependence on wires and more dependence on gas pipelines.

Keep in mind too that in rural areas CNG tanks or propane provide storage for gas heated homes. While this requires tanker transportation - it is still a more efficient CHP system than centralized electric only (depending on electric costs). Generally the CHP units work best in the colder north. In sunbelts like the SWest solar is also efficient and cheap.

We have plenty of NG and there are good biomass to syngas projects getting started. Eliminating the overhead wires will be a huge boon to the community AND provide far more secure energy.

I worked in fuel cell R&D for over 10 years as an engineer and materials scientist. Many fuel cell technologies can be made to work well. Fuel cell technology companies create a lot of hype by building expensive prototypes that can be demonstrated to function well. The challenge for everyone is making fuel cells work well and making them affordable at the same time. The challenge cannot be addressed simply through high volume manufacturing economies of scale. New material science breakthroughs are required. In the case of SOFC's, it is typically the seals in the fuel cells that are the achilles heel. (Catalyst life is also an issue.) If Bloom Energy has created some novel materials to deal with the seals and catalyst life, then they might have something. Does anyone know what Bloom's claim to fame for technology is?