ishmael n. daro

This is a pretty incredible. On CBS’s 60 Minutes this week, Leslie Stahl spoke with K.R. Sridhar, founder of Bloom Energy. Sridhar is a rocket scientist whose work for NASA led him to develop a module that could potentially produce oxygen on Mars. However, when the Mars mission was cancelled, he reworked his technology from taking in energy and producing oxygen to taking in oxygen and producing energy (with a little help from a fuel like natural gas).

His modules are known as Bloom Boxes and are small enough to hold in your hand. They consist of a series of stacked fuel cells, each only a few millimetres thick. One Bloom Box can power an entire European home while two could power a North American home. The boxes currently cost over $700,000 to produce but the price may eventually come down to only a few thousand dollars. The best part of all is that they don’t require the existing energy grid, which could have huge benefits for remote and developing regions.

Although companies in the fast moving world of renewable energy often boast of technological breakthroughs only to disappear into the mist, never to be seen again, one can’t help but feel excited about the Bloom Boxes. If they can be mass-produced cheaply enough, they could bring about the energy revolution that has long been predicted.