<story><title>Bloom Unveils Its Game Changing Energy Box</title><url>http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/bloom-box-launch/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hop</author><text>Fuel required @ rated power:	0.661 MMBtu/hr of natural gas. Rated power output (AC):	100 kW&lt;p&gt;Figure fuel costs of $10 per MMBtu. So it pumps out 100kW/hr electricity for $6.60.&lt;p&gt;~$0.09/kWh for electricity in Oregon (its double that for NYC). So we pay about $9 for 100kW/hr.&lt;p&gt;Thats a 30% savings in Oregon and about 70% for the East Coast. But it still releases a lot of CO2 - 773 lbs/MW-hr.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So if you ran one straight for a year and you used all its output, it would save $20k-$40k depending on electricity prices. So if they can get the price sub $100k and natural gas supply and price stays even, they could sell a lot of them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bloom Unveils Its Game Changing Energy Box</title><url>http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/bloom-box-launch/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tonystubblebine</author><text>Could somebody help with some background on the science?&lt;p&gt;What strikes me as odd is that you put fuel in the fuel cell. One of the examples they give is using these to charge your hyrbid car. So, by the transitive property, aren&apos;t you putting fuel into your car?&lt;p&gt;I guess I&apos;m trained to think of alternative energy sources like sun and wind, so I&apos;m thrown off here. What&apos;s the innovation?&lt;p&gt;I can see that you&apos;re generating electricity locally, which I guess means we could get energy to places without running power lines. But reading the article, that doesn&apos;t seem like the point of these.&lt;p&gt;The article does claim that the energy is more efficient than what you get on the grid. But if that&apos;s the case, why don&apos;t we just put a ton of these onto the grid and push down the cost of electricity for everyone?</text></comment>