>From Jed: ...
> ...If we had millions of these Bloom fuel cell gadgets in use, the > power company would be mainly in the distribution business, as a > broker you might say. This reduces the cost of privately owned > generators, and ensures reliability and availability when the > generators need maintenance. > > Private generation and co-generation is increasing in the U.S. > and Japan, with the excess power being sold through the power > company. The power company is already functioning as a broker. I noticed that initially some of the comments pertaining to bloom box technology were sarcastic in nature. Obviously bloom box technology is not the holy grail insofar as replacing the fossil fuel industry goes, particularly since the technology tends to require fossil fuel to run. With that said, and related to something Jed has already pointed out, I'd like to add the notion that bloom boxes may nevertheless serve yet another unexpected but useful service, one that is more subtle in nature. As bloom boxes hopefully become more prevalent, as they continue to fulfill their "niche" purpose, they may indirectly help acclimate the general public with the notion that electricity no longer ought to originate from huge centralized (vulnerable to attack) power distribution centers. Maybe society may actually begin to become comfortable with the notion that a vast matrix of bloom boxes distributed throughout the city is a far better way to go. Having a network of bloom boxes distributing electricity through a smart grid would be difficult to take out by a Jihad-crazed suicidal group of idiots. If a group of idiots were so crazed as to unfortunately take out a city block and all the primary bloom boxes installed in that block, nearby bloom boxes in adjacent city blocs should easily survive and continue supplying electricity to adjacent blocks. I gather it would essentially be the same concept as how the internet was built to withstand a massive attack. OTOH, it's not clear to me what the consumed fossil fuel efficiency ratio might be comparing a network of bloom boxes versus a fossil fuel power plant. One of the reasons I gather we have large centralized power plants is precisely because they are the most efficient way to produce electricity with our current technology. If a fossil fuel power plant were completely replaced with an equivalent network of bloom boxes that generated the same amount of electricity, would all these bloom boxes collective speaking require more or less fossil fuel than the power plant they hope to replace? I think that would be an interesting question to know the specifics of. I think I agree with Jed in the sense that power companies ought to start investing more of their infrastructure in the concept of becoming power broker/distributers. They should focus less on the planning and building of additional centralized power plants. If they are smart, they will start planning the licensing and distribution networks of bloom boxes capable of distributing electricity throughout a smart grid. If they don't do this some young Apple-like start-up enterprise is likely to take the business away from them. Another related point, even if it is a pie-in-the-sky dream at present. If Mills & Co. can get their BLP process working they ought to be able to quickly replace the growing network of bloom boxes with their own black light boxes. They would be able to do so precisely because the infrastructure was previously put in place, thanks to bloom boxes - and then THAT really would be a paradigm shift. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
