Built with patented solid oxide fuel cell technology, Bloom’s Energy Server™ is a new class of distributed power generator, producing clean, reliable, affordable electricity at the customer site.
Fuel cells are devices that convert fuel into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process rather than dirty combustion. They are like batteries except that they always run. Their particular type of fuel cell technology is different than legacy “hydrogen” fuel cells in three main ways:
- Low cost materials – Bloom Energy fuel cells use a common sand-like powder instead of precious metals like platinum or corrosive materials like acids.
- High electrical efficiency – fuel can be converted into electricity at nearly twice the rate of some legacy technologies.
- Fuel flexibility – Bloom Energy systems are capable of using either renewable or fossil fuels.
Each Bloom Energy Server provides 100kW of power, enough to meet the base-load needs of 100 average homes or a small office building… day and night, in roughly the footprint of a standard parking space. For more power simply add more energy servers.
Energy Server Architecture
At the heart of every Energy Server™ is Bloom’s patented solid oxide fuel cell technology.
Each Energy Server consists of thousands of Bloom’s fuel cells. Each cell is a flat solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like “powder.”
Each Bloom Energy fuel cell is capable of producing about 25W… enough to power a light bulb. For more power, the cells are sandwiched, along with metal interconnect plates into a fuel cell “stack”. A few stacks, together about the size of a loaf of bread, is enough to power an average home.
In an Energy Server, multiple stacks are aggregated together into a “power module”, and then multiple power modules, along with a common fuel input and electrical output are assembled as a complete system.
For more power, multiple Energy Server systems can be deployed side by side.
In addition to Bloom’s unmatched performance, this modular architecture offers…
- Easy and fast deployment
- Inherent redundancy for fault tolerance
- High availability (one power module can be serviced while all others continue to operate)
- Mobility
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells
Fuel cells were invented over a century ago and have been used in practically every NASA mission since the 1960’s, but until now, they have not gained widespread adoption because of their inherently high costs.
Legacy fuel cell technologies like proton exchange membranes (PEMs), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs), and molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), have all required expensive precious metals, corrosive acids, or hard to contain molten materials. Combined with performance that has been only marginally better than alternatives, they have not been able to deliver a strong enough economic value proposition to overcome the status quo.
Some makers of legacy fuel cell technologies have tried to overcome these limitations by offering combined heat and power (CHP) schemes to take advantage of their wasted heat. While CHP does improve the economic value proposition, it only really does so in environments with exactly the right ratios of heat and power requirements on a 24/7/365 basis. Everywhere else the cost, complexity, and customization of CHP tends to outweigh the benefits.
For decades, experts have agreed that solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) hold the greatest potential of any fuel cell technology. With low cost ceramic materials, and extremely high electrical efficiencies, SOFCs can deliver attractive economics without relying on CHP. But until now, there were significant technical challenges inhibiting the commercialization of this promising new technology. SOFCs operate at extremely high temperature (typically above 800°C). This high temperature gives them extremely high electrical efficiencies, and fuel flexibility, both of which contribute to better economics, but it also creates engineering challenges.
Bloom has solved these engineering challenges. With breakthroughs in materials science, and revolutionary new design, Bloom’s SOFC technology is a cost effective, all-electric solution.
Over a century in the making, fuel cells are finally clean, reliable, and most importantly, affordable.
Features & Benefits
| FEATURES | BENEFITS |
| Reverse Backup | Businesses often purchase generators and other expensive backup applications that sit idle 99% of the time, while they purchase their electricity from the grid as their primary source. The Bloom solution allows customers to flip that paradigm, by using the Energy Server as their primary power, and only purchasing electricity from the grid to supplement the output when necessary. Increased asset utilization leads to dramatically improved ROI for Bloom Energy’s customers. |
| Time to Power | 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. 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. |
| 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. |
| Hydrogen Production | Bloom’s technology, with its NASA roots, can be used to generate electricity and hydrogen. Coupled with intermittent renewable resources like solar or wind, Bloom’s future systems will produce and store hydrogen to enable a 24 hour renewable solution and provide a distributed hydrogen fueling infrastructure for hydrogen powered vehicles. |
| 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. |
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