NASA technology is being utilized on Earth through Bloom Energy.
Bloom Energy, of Sunnyvale, CA, was founded in 2001 and is known for their creation and use of the Bloom Box.
The Bloom Box was created through work performed at the University of Arizona as part of the NASA Mars space program. The assignment for Dr. KR Sridhar, who is the current CEO of Bloom Energy, and his team, was to create a technology that would be able to sustain life on Mars.
The device they created was capable of producing air and fuel from electricity. This new creation would also be able to have an even more beneficial impact here on Earth.
The energy server is built out of patented solid oxide fuel cell technology. Fuel cells are devices that convert fuel into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process rather than dirty combustion.
The box will allow a households to generate their own electricity without relying on the grid! The intentions are to replace the large power plants and transmission lines altogether.
Each box will provide 100kW of power that will generate enough to meet basic needs of 100 average-sized homes, or a small office building.
Bloom Energy is working towards reduced electricity costs, energy security, and energy independence.
60 Minutes did a feature piece on Bloom Energy back in February 2010. As discussed in this Green Chip Stocks article, that coverage started “IPO fever”. However, Bloom Box stock is not available yet but it’s possible the Bloom Energy ticker symbol will be seen in the near future as the technology progresses.
The technology is proven to work and there are intentions to make it more widely available, but for now there have only been a few places where the technology has been successfully tested.
Bloom Energy’s websitetells us that “in early 2006 Bloom shipped its first 5kW field trial unit to the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. After two years of successful field trials in Tennessee, California, and Alaska, to validate the technology, the first commercial (100kW) products were shipped to Google in July 2008.
Bloom Energy has a growing list of customers such as Walmart, Staples, Adobe, FedEx and Bank of America. Just to name a few.
Keep your eye on this company and possible Bloom Energy stock options in the future.
That’s all for now,
Cori
