I can't find the efficiency rating of the Bloom gadgets, but large-scale fuel cell efficiency is usually pretty high, like 60%. That is as good as the best combined cycle combustion generators. The only thing better is co-generation. The Bloom website makes snide comments about the latter:
"The ease of placing Bloom Energy Servers across a broad variety of geographies and customer segments allows systems to be installed quickly, on demand, without the added complexity of cumbersome combined heat and power applications or large space requirements of solar." The system has some other noteworthy advantages, including a few unique ones: The electrochemical reaction can be reversed, converting electricity into gas, to store energy. I suppose this would helpful with wind turbines. I expect overall it recovers only a fraction of the energy, much less than with batteries, but it would have large capacity. It would be just the thing to smooth out fluctuations from wind-generated power. It can reduce greenhouse gas emissions "100%." That caught my attention! Explanation: you can use biogas, which is renewable. That's a fair statement, because you cannot use biogas with most other generating systems. They are finicky about fuel, whereas this thing apparently will eat anything that burns. Ease of installation. "These systems' environmental footprint enables them to be exempt from local air permitting requirements, thus streamlining the approval process. Fast installation simply requires a concrete pad, a fuel source, and an internet connection." That last requirement is so 21st century! Here's one that would not have occurred to me: "DC Power: Bloom systems natively produce DC power, which provides an elegant solution to efficiently power DC data centers and/or be the plug-and-play provider for DC charging stations for electric vehicles." Google may be interested for that reason alone, since they have more data centers than you could shake a stick at. Here is an iffy claim. "Carbon Sequestration: The electrochemical reaction occurring within Bloom Energy systems generates electricity, heat, some H2O, and pure CO2. Traditionally, the most costly aspect of carbon sequestration is separating the CO2 from the other effluents. The pure CO2 emission allows for easy and cost-effective carbon sequestration from the Bloom systems." Yeah, right. You are going to sequester CO2 in a million different locations? Or put it in bottles or pipes, ship to a central location, and sequester it there? Ship it how? The energy-balance and dollar economics are not promising. - Jed
