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Well that assumes that power costs don't go up or that they don't go up as fast as the cost of natural gas.
Also it makes you less relient on the grid so it can act as a massive UPS. For a place like EBay a backup generator is going to be a small power plant so over all it could be a huge win.
The on thing that I wonder about is that 1000c temperature. That seems really high to me but the story is very short on details.

eBay says they installed 5 of the devices (at $700-800k each) nine months ago and have saved $100,000 since. Doing the math, each device is saving them about $27k a year, meaning that it will take right around 28 years to recoup the investment. Worse, the actual ROI on the purchase is a whopping 3.6%, and that's assuming that natural gas prices don't increase since it is still burning gas as fuel. Other than saving space, how is this better than solar panels which typically have a 15-20 year payoff period?

Ok, if the price quoted is before federal and state subsidies (California I would imagine has some pretty good clean energy grants), that might change the equations a bit. But even if the price was cut in half, the ROI would only be 7.2 percent, I thought companies like eBay and Google tended to be a bit more aggressive with their investments than that.

All that said, though, I hope money is not the only motivation why anybody would look into alternative energy sources.

If it's not economically viable, it won't happen. The world doesn't run on good will, it runs on money.

The fact they are in use with major corporations means it's not snake oil. The only question is cost. The first units are very expensive because they are hand built but according to the inventor they use no rare or expensive materials. If that's true then the costs will drop like a rock once they are mass produced. Fuel cells are nothing new he's just come up with a cheap cell. Most will be skeptical but this time it seems real. We aren't talking about wild claims they are in use now and even at the early adopter price the users seem very happy with them. If they can drop the price even to twice his claim they'll be a bargain.

Also I see no reason they wouldn't work for a car. The cell size would be half what a whole house unit would be and they'd be light. Just switch to LP gas and you have an electric car with an excellent range and lightweight. If the pricing is right in ten years they could cost a fraction of what a battery pack does making an LP gas electric car even cheaper than a regular car and likely with a similar range. Yes I know infrastructure but here's a shocker, I can get LP tanks at a 7/11! They are readily available now! If you have a LP gas for heat and cooking you could fill up at home!

Tax break costs just get passed around the population. Looking at the actual cost to produce decides the economics. Otherwise you're screwing others to make a profit yourself, which people hate about corporations, but seem to love about the government...

This is a neat idea... but the cost of the units is obviously prohibitive at the moment. People (generalizing) will pay a bit more for guaranteed clean energy, especially if at some point it has little or no ongoing cost. But they won't pay for something that has a 30 year break even unless the devices last that long without any significant maintenance (added cost).

If mass production brought the costs down, I could see this being an interesting alternative for folks not well served (in one way or another, including cost) by existing power utilities. Provided of course the machine with its "secret" components doesn't create other problems, like being non recyclable, or being hazardous in some other way.

This is more revolutionary for the third world though.. any country without an existing power infrastructure or with a less than robust one could install a lower cost version of this unit at a lower price than creating a country wide power distribution network. We may see a time in the near future where the third world countries are running off of these sorts of micro power plants while the US still gets its energy centrally, from big expensive power plants.

Green is good, but people won't do it unless it's cheap too. We're kinda dumb that way.

Not necessarily. Many things favor central generation, including end-user distribution infrastructure, bulk buys, centralized maintenance, and -- here's a big one -- much longer lifespans than SOFCs.

And even if that wasn't the case, and even if we assume your scenario, the payback would be *at best* 30 years (not considering the time-value of money). To get under 30 years, you have to assume that the electricity costs rise *faster* than the NG costs, not at the same speed.

I'm not missing that piece... I intentionally left it out. That money comes out of the economy one way or another. Through company expenditure, the government taxing, or through inflationary spending, every dollar comes out of somebody's pocket. The government can't create value through subsidies and tax credits, they can only steal from Peter to pay Paul (not to mention some astronomical administrative costs).

Sounds like this converts Natural Gas into electricity, what a lot of people don't realize is that a lot of our electrical power comes from Natural Gas being burned in motors that TURN generators. They are either Turbines or conventional large internal combustion engines that turn those generators, the conventional way of turning chemical energy into electrical energy is very poor and a lot of energy is wasted as heat energy. Sounds like these Boxes or "Heat Catalyzing Fuel Cells" could be far more efficient and if can be scaled up could be used to stretch the fossil fuel buck a whole lot more and easily be scaled to bio fuels.

Yes, you are correct. If it's economically advantageous to individuals to make the planet uninhabitable, that is what will happen. In the same way, individual yeast in a jar of sugar water will ferment, ferment, ferment until the alcohol concentration is so high it kills them all. Each yeast is just doing what it needs to survive.

I'm not saying it's good, this is just how it is. If you want to save the world, you have to make it more profitable to save it than destroy it.

If it means we don't have to spend tax dollars on new power distribution infrastructure, then it can be a net win. It is entirely possible ebay's power requirements were overloading what the grid had to offer at that location.

It runs their servers when there's a rolling blackout and the sun isn't shining.

You are forgetting the tax breaks the state of CA and the feds give you for going green. In the end a unit costs around $400k which cuts the time to 15 years.

So, basically, they can get an acceptable ROI as long as all the rest of us pay for half of their system for them? Sounds like a bargain....

They tried to gloss over it, but in the end it still takes in oxygen and releases CO2 while burning hydrocarbons...

Yes, but it uses the much more carbon neutral fuel natural gas. Natural gas is easy to produce from plant biomass. Easier than ethanol or gasoline. It happens in swamps naturally. Even people can do it. Why just last night I was turning some baked beans I had for dinner into natural gas in my sleep.

"Fuel cells aren't THAT much more efficient than large gas turbines + generators anyway."

I find a problem with the sort of thinking you are implying, "that"

Efficient improvements are just that, improvements. and if you consistently try doing it, you get to the point where it's at the top.

think about it, hull design's, IC spacing, automotive metals... they are more efficient related improvements ( well hull designs I am sure about, I really don't know much about integrated circuit and transistor spacing, and automotive metals have been improved for easier handling and better reactions in accidents )

my point is that if we don't try to improve efficiency consistently, we end up wasting more resources over a longer term.

I see this repeated often and it is simply wrong. Natural gas emits carbon, yes. But it emits far less carbon than coal or oil and is far, far more abundant than any renewable energy source. So natural gas usage will go up even if there is a carbon tax because it will be the best alternative for cheap, on-demand, transportable energy.

For the record, I do usually tip at about 20%. That being said, tipping is a load of crap. The problem is, it's not a tip, it's an expectation. I'd rather them advertise the actual cost upfront and pay their staff a reasonable wage rather than forcing the consumer to determine pay rates based on obligation. I mean really, if the service is bad, you won't get repeat customers, and if service is good, you'll have free advertising by word of mouth.

I mean, really, I don't get paid extra for being nice and attentive at my job, it's expected of me.

You are basing your payback time based on current cost of a unit. Typically, mass production of units and the resulting competition (from the likes of GE) could bring down the cost of each unit drastically, may be to a 10th of the cost it is today. What would that do to the payback time?

Or the cost of replacing the catalyst plates regularly. These are not forever without maintenance boxes... I know how they work and you need to replace the membranes regularly.. University of Michigan has one installed at the lakeshore facility around here. they stopped running it because of the maintenance costs. The Natural gas turbine, windmills and solar panel covered roof generates enough power for the facility right now.

ROI is not the issue.

The issue is appeasing the Green God.

We used to appease the Sun God, then the son of God, now we've moved to the Green God.

Why should I care if humans survive after I'm gone? I honestly don't have an answer for that, so maybe you can enlighten me.

They don't run on air - they need a source of methane. Your local pig wallow isn't going to be big enough - so you're still using fossil fuels.

In other words, they have a negative ROI.

Until the world is not inhabitable anymore...

Why should I care if humans survive after I'm gone? I honestly don't have an answer for that, so maybe you can enlighten me.

Well, unless you're into reincarnation or something like that, I don't think it's even possible to care after you're dead and gone.

eBay says they installed 5 of the devices (at $700-800k each) nine months ago and have saved $100,000 since.

Now, maybe it's just me, but the likelihood of a large tech company buying something like this (they're beta-testers) with no gain sounds unlikely.

We are told that each unit costs around 700,000 dollars. The guy from eBay didn't say "we paid 700,000 for one". Just how much they're saving in energy costs. For all we know, eBay is an investor in the BloomBox and working as unpaid quality testers. I.e. they invest 50 million dollars in the company, and in addition to 50 mill in stocks, they get to buy some test units at a significant discount. Same for Google and FedEx. Who knows.

I dare you to find a safe bond or cd yielding 5% right about now.

> Given that I might spend $100 a month to power a house

It really depends on where you are and what parts of your house run on electricity. DC area, with heat, A/C, hot water, cooking, lighting all on electricity, a 2300-sq-ft or so house (nothing ridiculous; basic suburban house) ends up averaging about $400 a month in electricity costs. If you're further south, it might run more; A/C is _expensive_.

If you're in the northeast and use gas/oil for all your heat/cooking needs, and don't have A/C, so all you run is lights, then it's possible to hit numbers on the order of $30 a month. Not sure where your $10 a month number comes from.

To me that is a sign of how broken the world is. You're better off not doing anything than actually taking a proactive step.

Natural Gas is (mostly) methane, you know that right? Right now energy companies practically throw it away, and what little they do sell they sell for dirt cheep because the market is so small.

You obviously don't have to pay a gas bill.
 

Getting it to market en-masse would be cheap, the infrastructure is already there, as natural gas is ubiquitous as it is even though we only use a small percentage of what is available.

Ah yes, we have infrastructure to move 'what little they do sell' so we must have the infrastructure to move much larger quantities. After all, we don't build freeways because two lane country roads are quite adequate.
 

How the hell do you think they are saving $100,000+ per year on these things? Magic?

Subsidies, tax incentives, and depreciation.

A fuel cell is useless for backup power; it takes 4-8 hours to get up to temperature depending on the size and technology. Incremental size increases for a diesel engine are a rounding error.

Companies are doing this in anticipation of carbon offsets and to tell their shareholders that they are working to be more green. Occasionally, you can do something useful with the "waste heat" from the units which makes them slightly more attractive... but not often.

If you're infected with even one meme, you should care.

I have to think that you've tipped all the wrong people, and been getting terrible service. You probably should have never tipped any of them at all. The type of service that earns a 20% tip is so good, you would never argue against it.

Just off the top of my head? Pragmatic self-interest meets Pascal's wager. If there's enough people who don't care, what are the chances that together the lot of you will ruin things so fast that your life is FUBAR *before* you're gone?