Last week we broached the topic of distributed generation, of unleashing an energy democracy of unimagined proportions. Let take the next step in this dream, of looking at a few players in this space. The company we shall be discussing today is Bloom Energy.
Bloom Energy is one of the hottest cleantech startup currently, having been valued at over a billion dollars and having backers as powerful as Kleiner Perkins, Google and Amazon, to name a few. More than the strong credentials of the backers and the Solid Oxide fuel cell technology, the most exciting aspect of Bloom Energy is the concept it envisages. That concept draws me to the firm.
Bloom Energy manufactures Bloom Boxes, which are containers the size of a single car’s parking space and provide a power of 100kW. This power is sufficient to light up 100 average homes, or a small office building. The technology driving this power generation is a solid oxide fuel cell, which is a stack of ceramic plates coated with zirconium oxide, found in beach sand. The fuel cell converts natural gas to electricity and is a very clean source of electricity. The reaction is carried out at 800 degree Celcius, which means very high efficiencies but also increased engineering challenges. The bloom boxes can be stored in your basement and can provide clean, reliable power which is right in your backyard and not exposed to the transmission and distribution red tape.
This is why a lot of business are “blooming” with the possibilities of bloom boxes, most notable being Google, ebay and Adobe, which are all looking to use bloom energy for their data centers. The cost of a bloom box is in the vicinity of $750,000 and the cost of electricity that one gets from this box, including its capital cost is 14 cents/kWh. The average cost of commercial electricity from conventional sources is 10 cents/kWh in some regions in the US. California, where the company is headquartered, is a big blooming ground for this company, pun intended, purely because the power prices in California are one of the highest in the world. The bloom boxes are liberating these electricity guzzling data centers from the shackles of grid electricity and at a reasonable cost.
As with everything in life, there are two sides to the Bloom story as well. Bloom boxes are heavily subsidized at the moment, with about 20% subsidy provided by the state of California and another good chunk coming from Federal subsidies. Hence, the proliferation is California and absolutely no growth outside. The boxes are also deemed too costly, which increases the cost of electricity. To tackle this issue, Bloom Energy has started offering just the electricity as a service, cutely labeled as Bloom Electrons. So you just sign a contract with them for electricity and you don’t need to buy the box anymore. This should ease the price significantly. Also, the low cost of natural gas should reduce the price even further.
In a nutshell, this company is doing something that is very radical with a technology that was considered very radical. The distribution generation aspect of this company is riveting and merits a serious look.
Back in 2005, I had decided that my final year thesis at IIT would be on Solid Oxide fuel cells. It didn’t take me long, with my brilliant reasoning, to figure out that the problems associated with this technology would not carry it beyond the confines of a lab. Swiftly, I changed my topic to studying catalysis instead. One BIG missed opportunity, some would say. To which I say, I have stopped counting missed opportunities:)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Energy Democracy
Long weekends spent indoors get you thinking about stuff. Especially when it is -30 degree Celsius outside; all you can do is drink a cup of tea and think.
So I thought. And what better topic to mull over than the electricity grid system! It has been well documented that in many ways the current electric grid resembles the rigidity of landline telephones. The advent of cell phones has revolutionized the telecom sector in more ways than can be described here. This impact has been even more dramatic when you look at the revolution, mildly put, in the developing world. Individual people have been empowered to customize the cell phone to suit their needs and there ARE more than 6 billion needs in the world. What a distance we have come from those days of privileged landline connections to now when having a cell phone comes along with having a name!
The similarities between this and our wonderful grid are striking. Power is produced at a remote location, wires transfer electricity over long distances and bring it to our homes. More than anything else, the most disturbing fact is that electric cables still divide the world into haves and have-nots the same way telephone wires did about 2 decades ago. Electricity is still considered a luxury in most parts of the world, the enviable status telephones had back then. This is not just morally wrong, in a world which has more than 500 million facebook users, but technically inefficient as well!
Electricity generation, at a conventional power plant, is a very inefficient process. For every 100 units of energy that is fed into a plant, 62 units are lost in plant inefficiencies. The remaining 38 units are then sent across the transmission lines which ensure a loss of another 2 units. Of the 36 units entering our homes, 2 units are used to light a typical incandescent bulb and 34 units are lost in heating of the filament used in the bulb. Overall, the efficiency of this process is 2%. This efficiency is criminal in a world, again, inhabited by 500 million facebook users. Facebook has really provided us with a nice sense of perspective to drive any point home:)
It’s about time a cellular phone should appear and break this ossified system of generation and transmission. And I’ve got two words for you: distributed and generation! Distributed generation breaks the monopoly of the big power companies and utilities by placing many different sources of power. Think solar power, the solar panel on your roof could make you self sufficient in electricity and you can break the shackles of the power plants, electric suppliers and electric wires. Obviously, this does not mean putting a tiny coal fired plant in your house; there are some fuels for which economies of scale still make sense. My contention is that we need a mixed approach of power generation from now on: distributed generation for some fuels and centralized ones for other. Solar power is a classic case of the former, and a few more notable examples come to my mind:
-Generating localized power from biomass
-Bloom energy, one of the hottest energy start ups selling fuel cell boxes
-Small Nuclear, a miniscule reactor for a locality(surprise, surprise!!)
I intend to cover each one of them in m y subsequent posts and, hopefully, engage you in a dialogue that can shape the way we view electricity. As solar is already extensively covered I will start with the remaining items in the list above.
History has it that electricity was not always meant to be produced in this centralized fashion. Thomas Edison, arguably the father of electricity, started with DC generation, in which the power sources were placed in vicinity of the people consuming them. It was later that his protégé, Nikola Tesla, developed AC generation. Economies of scale of large, centralized generation and a desire to move these ogreish, polluting sources away from mankind made AC the technology of choice. It’s time to take a cue from the father of electricity!
Let a billion reactors bloom!
So I thought. And what better topic to mull over than the electricity grid system! It has been well documented that in many ways the current electric grid resembles the rigidity of landline telephones. The advent of cell phones has revolutionized the telecom sector in more ways than can be described here. This impact has been even more dramatic when you look at the revolution, mildly put, in the developing world. Individual people have been empowered to customize the cell phone to suit their needs and there ARE more than 6 billion needs in the world. What a distance we have come from those days of privileged landline connections to now when having a cell phone comes along with having a name!
The similarities between this and our wonderful grid are striking. Power is produced at a remote location, wires transfer electricity over long distances and bring it to our homes. More than anything else, the most disturbing fact is that electric cables still divide the world into haves and have-nots the same way telephone wires did about 2 decades ago. Electricity is still considered a luxury in most parts of the world, the enviable status telephones had back then. This is not just morally wrong, in a world which has more than 500 million facebook users, but technically inefficient as well!
Electricity generation, at a conventional power plant, is a very inefficient process. For every 100 units of energy that is fed into a plant, 62 units are lost in plant inefficiencies. The remaining 38 units are then sent across the transmission lines which ensure a loss of another 2 units. Of the 36 units entering our homes, 2 units are used to light a typical incandescent bulb and 34 units are lost in heating of the filament used in the bulb. Overall, the efficiency of this process is 2%. This efficiency is criminal in a world, again, inhabited by 500 million facebook users. Facebook has really provided us with a nice sense of perspective to drive any point home:)
It’s about time a cellular phone should appear and break this ossified system of generation and transmission. And I’ve got two words for you: distributed and generation! Distributed generation breaks the monopoly of the big power companies and utilities by placing many different sources of power. Think solar power, the solar panel on your roof could make you self sufficient in electricity and you can break the shackles of the power plants, electric suppliers and electric wires. Obviously, this does not mean putting a tiny coal fired plant in your house; there are some fuels for which economies of scale still make sense. My contention is that we need a mixed approach of power generation from now on: distributed generation for some fuels and centralized ones for other. Solar power is a classic case of the former, and a few more notable examples come to my mind:
-Generating localized power from biomass
-Bloom energy, one of the hottest energy start ups selling fuel cell boxes
-Small Nuclear, a miniscule reactor for a locality(surprise, surprise!!)
I intend to cover each one of them in m y subsequent posts and, hopefully, engage you in a dialogue that can shape the way we view electricity. As solar is already extensively covered I will start with the remaining items in the list above.
History has it that electricity was not always meant to be produced in this centralized fashion. Thomas Edison, arguably the father of electricity, started with DC generation, in which the power sources were placed in vicinity of the people consuming them. It was later that his protégé, Nikola Tesla, developed AC generation. Economies of scale of large, centralized generation and a desire to move these ogreish, polluting sources away from mankind made AC the technology of choice. It’s time to take a cue from the father of electricity!
Let a billion reactors bloom!
Friday, January 21, 2011
India's National Solar Mission
They say new year resolutions are meant to be broken. I say, who are 'they'?:)
Before moving ahead, let's recap what was discussed in the previous post for these are connected. The last post broached the role of government policies in encouraging a new technology, with particular focus on the Indian Government's massive solar ambition, a plan they are investing close to 20 billion dollars in. The target is for India to have a total installed capacity of 20 GW (GigaWatt, equal to a billion watts) by 2020, a 100 fold increase in solar capacity in a decade. To put this number in perspective, this is equal to the power requirement of 200 million 100 watt electric bulb, the omnipresent unit of everyday home. If we replace the incandescent bulb with the new compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), which uses about 20 watts of average, you can do the math to figure out that this installed solar capacity can light up 1 billion CFLs. That amounts to almost 1 lit CFL per Indian, or about 4 lit CFLs per household, if I assume that the number of people per household is 4 in India. It would be kosher to add a caveat that all these calculations are theoretical in nature for the installed capacity of 20 GW does not translate to a total power production of the same amount. That discussion is beyond the scope of this post.
The plan target also includes setting up a solar manufacturing capability of 4-5 GW by 2017. Of the 20 GW of installed solar power, off-grid applications shall amount to the tune of 2 GW by 2020, and roof-top solar capacity shall sum up to 3 GW by the same yar. Off-grid applications denote the applications for which we need not draw power from the electric grid, say for example if you are not charging your cell phones, batteries, laptops, etc. by plugging the plug in your home's socket you are using off-grid power. If the charging is being done with the energy generated form solar panels installed on your roof, that comes under the purview of rooftop solar and will be encouraged by the government.
If we look at the historical development of solar power in India, we will find the main driver has been the highly unreliable, at best, and completely absent, at worst, nature of electric power in India. 40% of India lives without access to grid electricity. Over 15% of the villages in India are still not electrified, which is the first step. How many electrified villages receive power is a topic for another day:)
In the absence of reliable, or any, power, people had taken to diesel generators, which are about 7 times the cost of power provided by the grid. Solar energy fit the bill for those bravehearts who wanted a cheap and reliable source. The total installed capacity of solar energy in India is around 200 MW currently.
Solar projects will be doles out in auctions phased over the next 10 years and the first such auction was held only last month. This was a much awaited event in the global renewable industry, as is expected by the sheer size of the plan. A total of 620 MW of solar capacity has been sanctioned by the government, which is about 3% of the total target. The auction was a major success, purely by the number of companies bidding in it. However, the prices at which companies won projects were too low, which might affect the sustainability of these projects. One general theme among the winners was the obvious lack of experience of more than a few of them in the energy industry, the list includes a woolen yarn maker and an industrial pipe supplier. We will have to wait and see their capacility in uncharted waters.
One major outcome of this auction was the obvious concentration of projects in the Indian state of Rajasthan. While it could be expected, given the solar irradiance of that state, other state governments might feel left out of this massive subsidy. One such state, none other than Gujarat, has already acted in this regard by having their own state's solar plan. If the national plan has auctioned off 620 MW of solar capacity, Gujarat alone has sanctioned about 1300 MW of solar plants and plans to have another 1700 MW in the next 4 years.
Well, if there is one key takeaway amidst all the numbers thrown in this post, it is that you will see a lot of excitement and activity around solar power in India. I am feverishly excited about the rollout of this plan. Given a choice, I would fast forward 10 years of my life and see where it stands in 2021.
On second thoughts, maybe not:) Oh, and the other key takeaway, the next time you crib about excessive heat in Delhi, you might want to turn around and install solar panels on your roof. Look at the glass half full! Now, who can argue against that:)
Before moving ahead, let's recap what was discussed in the previous post for these are connected. The last post broached the role of government policies in encouraging a new technology, with particular focus on the Indian Government's massive solar ambition, a plan they are investing close to 20 billion dollars in. The target is for India to have a total installed capacity of 20 GW (GigaWatt, equal to a billion watts) by 2020, a 100 fold increase in solar capacity in a decade. To put this number in perspective, this is equal to the power requirement of 200 million 100 watt electric bulb, the omnipresent unit of everyday home. If we replace the incandescent bulb with the new compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), which uses about 20 watts of average, you can do the math to figure out that this installed solar capacity can light up 1 billion CFLs. That amounts to almost 1 lit CFL per Indian, or about 4 lit CFLs per household, if I assume that the number of people per household is 4 in India. It would be kosher to add a caveat that all these calculations are theoretical in nature for the installed capacity of 20 GW does not translate to a total power production of the same amount. That discussion is beyond the scope of this post.
The plan target also includes setting up a solar manufacturing capability of 4-5 GW by 2017. Of the 20 GW of installed solar power, off-grid applications shall amount to the tune of 2 GW by 2020, and roof-top solar capacity shall sum up to 3 GW by the same yar. Off-grid applications denote the applications for which we need not draw power from the electric grid, say for example if you are not charging your cell phones, batteries, laptops, etc. by plugging the plug in your home's socket you are using off-grid power. If the charging is being done with the energy generated form solar panels installed on your roof, that comes under the purview of rooftop solar and will be encouraged by the government.
If we look at the historical development of solar power in India, we will find the main driver has been the highly unreliable, at best, and completely absent, at worst, nature of electric power in India. 40% of India lives without access to grid electricity. Over 15% of the villages in India are still not electrified, which is the first step. How many electrified villages receive power is a topic for another day:)
In the absence of reliable, or any, power, people had taken to diesel generators, which are about 7 times the cost of power provided by the grid. Solar energy fit the bill for those bravehearts who wanted a cheap and reliable source. The total installed capacity of solar energy in India is around 200 MW currently.
Solar projects will be doles out in auctions phased over the next 10 years and the first such auction was held only last month. This was a much awaited event in the global renewable industry, as is expected by the sheer size of the plan. A total of 620 MW of solar capacity has been sanctioned by the government, which is about 3% of the total target. The auction was a major success, purely by the number of companies bidding in it. However, the prices at which companies won projects were too low, which might affect the sustainability of these projects. One general theme among the winners was the obvious lack of experience of more than a few of them in the energy industry, the list includes a woolen yarn maker and an industrial pipe supplier. We will have to wait and see their capacility in uncharted waters.
One major outcome of this auction was the obvious concentration of projects in the Indian state of Rajasthan. While it could be expected, given the solar irradiance of that state, other state governments might feel left out of this massive subsidy. One such state, none other than Gujarat, has already acted in this regard by having their own state's solar plan. If the national plan has auctioned off 620 MW of solar capacity, Gujarat alone has sanctioned about 1300 MW of solar plants and plans to have another 1700 MW in the next 4 years.
Well, if there is one key takeaway amidst all the numbers thrown in this post, it is that you will see a lot of excitement and activity around solar power in India. I am feverishly excited about the rollout of this plan. Given a choice, I would fast forward 10 years of my life and see where it stands in 2021.
On second thoughts, maybe not:) Oh, and the other key takeaway, the next time you crib about excessive heat in Delhi, you might want to turn around and install solar panels on your roof. Look at the glass half full! Now, who can argue against that:)
Saturday, January 8, 2011
A sunny start!
Any new year starts with a host of resolutions and 2011 has been no different for me. Foremost among them is my resolution to be more active with my blogging this year. When the energy world is agog with such frenetic activity, it's almost criminal for an enthusiastic reporter like me to shut the shop as frequently as I do. Clarion call: time for action!
There can be no topic more fitting for a blog in this biting cold, snowy night than the topic of the sun. Oh, just the thought of the sun brings a smile:) The area of solar energy has been hogging the limelight a lot lately and deserves a discussion.
Solar energy has for long been the holy grail of scientists and researchers around the globe. Historically, solar energy has been harnessed by mankind in a range of ways, from orienting architectural designs to the position of the sun to installing solar panels on NASA space missions. Active use of solar power in our day to day life is a very recent phenomenon, and an area of avid interest. The biggest challenge in the mass deployment of solar energy for electricity production is its massive cost of generation. The cost of producing electricity from solar is about one order of magnitude higher than from conventional sources.
Deployment of solar power is mostly a byproduct of goverment policies around the world. Many countries have taken the leap of faith on solar; Germany, Spain, US being the forerunners, but the two most exciting solar deployment plans come from the two most exciting developing countries: India and China. India, in 2009, announced an audacious plan to aim for a solar installed capacity of 20 GW in a decade, from about 200 MW right now. That's a 100 fold jump in the installed capacity in a decade. Off-grid applications have a target of 2 GW by 2020 and rooftop solar will have to meet a stiff target of 3 GW in the same time frame. Not just this, solar manufacturing is one area of prime importance in this plan: it is aimed to jump from a meagre 700 MW capapcity currently to about 4-5 GW in a decade. Using a slew of incentives, including tax breaks, no import duties etc, the government plans to increase the manufacturing base by 2 orders of magnitude in a decade! I don't remember the last time India was so bullish on manufacturing something!
Now, before the familiar high sounding talk by the Indian government forces you to have a hearty laugh at its audacity and switch off, consider this: according to estimates, 19-20 billion USD has been committed in government subsidies to make this plan a success. That is something! The first set of auctions were held 3 weeks ago and about 620 MW of solar plants have been sanctioned, 150 MW of solar PV and 470 MW of solar thermal. Looking good so far, right!
That India should be a prime location for harnessing solar power should be rather commonsense, given that about 5000 trillion kWh of solar energy is incident on India per year, these targets are taking this commonsense to a whole new level.
I could ramble on about the merits and demerits of India's plan and the way the first auction panned out but I will save all that for subsequent posts. Afterall, who doesn't like to keep talking about warm, benevolent things:)
Hope to see you more often in 2011!:)
There can be no topic more fitting for a blog in this biting cold, snowy night than the topic of the sun. Oh, just the thought of the sun brings a smile:) The area of solar energy has been hogging the limelight a lot lately and deserves a discussion.
Solar energy has for long been the holy grail of scientists and researchers around the globe. Historically, solar energy has been harnessed by mankind in a range of ways, from orienting architectural designs to the position of the sun to installing solar panels on NASA space missions. Active use of solar power in our day to day life is a very recent phenomenon, and an area of avid interest. The biggest challenge in the mass deployment of solar energy for electricity production is its massive cost of generation. The cost of producing electricity from solar is about one order of magnitude higher than from conventional sources.
Deployment of solar power is mostly a byproduct of goverment policies around the world. Many countries have taken the leap of faith on solar; Germany, Spain, US being the forerunners, but the two most exciting solar deployment plans come from the two most exciting developing countries: India and China. India, in 2009, announced an audacious plan to aim for a solar installed capacity of 20 GW in a decade, from about 200 MW right now. That's a 100 fold jump in the installed capacity in a decade. Off-grid applications have a target of 2 GW by 2020 and rooftop solar will have to meet a stiff target of 3 GW in the same time frame. Not just this, solar manufacturing is one area of prime importance in this plan: it is aimed to jump from a meagre 700 MW capapcity currently to about 4-5 GW in a decade. Using a slew of incentives, including tax breaks, no import duties etc, the government plans to increase the manufacturing base by 2 orders of magnitude in a decade! I don't remember the last time India was so bullish on manufacturing something!
Now, before the familiar high sounding talk by the Indian government forces you to have a hearty laugh at its audacity and switch off, consider this: according to estimates, 19-20 billion USD has been committed in government subsidies to make this plan a success. That is something! The first set of auctions were held 3 weeks ago and about 620 MW of solar plants have been sanctioned, 150 MW of solar PV and 470 MW of solar thermal. Looking good so far, right!
That India should be a prime location for harnessing solar power should be rather commonsense, given that about 5000 trillion kWh of solar energy is incident on India per year, these targets are taking this commonsense to a whole new level.
I could ramble on about the merits and demerits of India's plan and the way the first auction panned out but I will save all that for subsequent posts. Afterall, who doesn't like to keep talking about warm, benevolent things:)
Hope to see you more often in 2011!:)
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