Bloom Energy on 60 Minutes

[chaniarts]

4 9's is about 52.5 minutes outage/year.

[George]

Sure, been around for a long time and whats your point? But sorry, they are not in common usage for very practical reasons. The CT school thing is nothing practical and is just throw a bunch of tax dollars at something to feel good.

*AND* you missed the point of my reply entirely. We know nothing about the "magical fuel cells" which are the topic of this thread.

Do they have them yet?

[salty]

Good Grief!

[Jim Yanik]

Robert Neville wrote in news: [e-mail]:

if they burn hydrocarbon fuels,where does the carbon go?

Answer;CO2,a greenhouse gas.

from Wiki,on natural gas; Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, it must undergo extensive processing to remove almost all materials other than methane. The by- products of that processing include ethane, propane, butanes, pentanes and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, elemental sulfur, carbon dioxide, water vapor and sometimes helium and nitrogen.

seems like this isn't so "green".

[Douglas Johnson]

I don't really expect a 60 minutes story to be the equivalent of a presentation at a technical conference. Bloom Energy is the assignee on 52 patent applications:

There is a lot of detail in them. Some of the patents seem to be peripheral to the main ideas, but that is what you would expect.

My take on them is probably the same as most people around here: They are serious, they are real, and it is a long hard road from here to where they need to be. -- Doug

[Douglas Johnson]

Did you really expect 60 minutes to bore their audience with technical details?

shows Bloom Energy's current patent applications. That should give you a starting point for technical details. I'm sure there is a lot they are holding as trade secrets right now. I would.

-- Doug

[Douglas Johnson]

True. But that's far more reliable than the grid around here.

-- Doug

[Douglas Johnson]

I guess it depends on what you compare it to. Beats the socks off of coal.

-- Doug

[dpb]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

The subject of these is nothing at all related to H fuel cells....that's the whole point.

--

[salty]

Now you are just being dopey.

[Robert Neville]

Did you read the San Jose Mercury article posted here?

[salty]

Yes.

[Robert Neville]

Then you will have noted that low temp hydrogen fuel cells are not what's being discussed in this thread.

[Jim Yanik]

Douglas Johnson wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I agree,but it loses to nuclear. IMO,we should find a way to use nuclear power to convert our coal into auto fuels.

AFTER we drill ANWR and the offshore fields.

[Jim Yanik]

Douglas Johnson wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I don't trust 60 Minutes to give an honest story. They have lost their credibility.(Bush memos and Dan Rather...)

[salty]

It didn't say that in the article. It also pointed out that there are many types of fuel cells and all are related.

Were you aware that the Bloom fuel cells can run on a wider variety of fuels, as well as the ones the low temp cells are limited to?

Do you have these mental problems every time someone comes out with a new car model? Claim it's all hype, and BS, despite the fact that there are millions of cars already on the road?

[Douglas Johnson]

I don't completely trust any news organization, by itself, to give an honest story. Not CBS, NBC, Fox, or whoever. I've been personally involved in a number of incidents that later made the news. More often than not, I wasn't sure they were talking about the same thing.

But on the other hand, just because someone has said something false, it does not mean everything they say is false. If it is something important, check it with other sources. In the case of the Bloom story, it appears to be fairly accurate, even if told with a bit of wide-eyed awe.

-- Doug

[Robert Neville]

No. But I do have an engineering degree and have been a practicing aerospace engineer for over 20 years. I'm also reasonably well educated and capable of discerning thought. There are basic thermodynamic laws involved here and my BS detector starts flashing bright red when a company looking for investors to bail out the venture capitalists conveniently glosses over what I know to be serious engineering problems that companies like GE and Siemens have failed to overcome, despite investments of billions of dollars.

The icing of the cake for me is when the lead VC for Bloom happens to be the company that hyped "it" as being the invention of the century and wouldn't release any details for months. You remember "it" don't you? Or maybe I should use its official name - the Segway.

[Jim Elbrecht]

Doesn't sound like the venture capitalists are looking for relief; "According to Green Chip Stocks, John Doerr ? the billionaire venture capitalist that is currently backing Bloom Energy?s invention ? says there aren?t any plans in the immediate future for an IPO. They report:

Doerr said it?ll be nine years before they think about an IPO, even though it has ?substantial revenues and orders.? According to Doerr, there is simply more ?capital required to grow a great green company.? "

Yeah-- the loser. He even thought Netscape, Google and Amazon could amount to something. He's even snowed Forbes Magazine into putting him on their Midas List. They probably just watch too much network TV.

Healthy skepticism is good. But you're way over the top on negativity here. Is it just because of 60 Minutes?

Jim

[salty]

So, yes, you do have some sort of irrational mental block.