>From Terry: > http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69C6KE20101014
Saw the article when it first aired on 60 Minutes. Really cool idea. I gather one of the bloom box's best selling points is the fact that it's fairly indiscriminate when it comes to what likes to be feed. It likes fossil fuels. I gather it can consume methane, natural gas, or whatever. What I'd like to know what the bloom box's efficiency rate is compared to other AE devices on the market today. Anybody got an idea on that? I don't have the figures in front of me but I seem to recall that it might be more efficient that many AE devices currently on the market. One comment doesn't sound right to me, however: > Bloom's boxes cost $700,000 to $800,000, and each provides 100 kilowatts > of electricity -- enough to power 100 average U.S. homes -- with roughly > the footprint of a parking space. I thought an average U.S. home needs access to approximately 25 Kilowatts. If so, that would theoretically drop the number way down to only 4 homes per bloom box, not 100. The article states a bloom box generates 100 kilowatts. That means one hundred U.S. homes could only have "continuous" access to a single kilowatt per bloom box. That's grossly inadequate by U.S. home standards. Granted I suspect most U.S. homes don't really need access to 25 kilowatts continuously. Perhaps only 5 - 10 kilowatts, (and probably closer to five) but even if that were the case the numbers would still shrink down to 10 or at best 20. Who came up with the 100 homes figure! Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
