Freedom of energy choice

If you are an entrepreneur or you just like to read about technology you probably read a book “Crossing the chasm” by Geoffrey Moore. For me it was a real eye opener and helped me understand the way people adapt to new technologies. In many cases such technologies are very disruptive to the existing paradigms, which is why it typically takes a lot to cross from initial early adopters to the mainstream use. In one of its latest issues of 2009 Business Week wrote about technology innovators and Bloom Energy stood up for me.

 

Bloom’s solution for energy generation called Bloom Box is as disruptive as it comes. It does about the same to the energy generation as the introduction of cellular phones did to the conventional land lines. It democratizes the whole idea of energy generation by switching from centrally enabled and investment heavy infrastructure of power plants and electric grid to completely autonomous energy generation. 

 

The company is really tight lipped about the details but you can get an overall idea from the article. Business Week describes it as being based on new fuel cell technology that uses oxygen as a main source of energy. The trick is that the process can work two ways. If the Bloom Box is connected to a wind turbine or solar panels it can use the external energy to generate and store hydrogen and oxygen. It can then use these two gases to generate electricity. The chemical process is based on pulling ions of the gas through its core at high temperatures. Although it consumes gas to operate, Bloom Box produces less than half of green house emissions comparing to traditional gas burning systems and does not involve combustion.

 

Looking at it from supply chain point of view this solution creates a whole new supply chain and even a new industry. "We need an entire supply chain around us to scale" says Dr. Sridhar, Founder of Bloom Energy. With 1.5 billion people living without electricity this technology can have a huge impact especially when deployed in remote villages where building a grid is cost prohibitive. Let’s wait and see – the company says it will need around 5 years to compete with traditional solutions on price. But they got me really excited.

Comments: 0; Published: January 18, 2010; Permalink

Tags: supply chain quality