End to All Power Problems

Exactly. It's not as if the virtues of this new technology will prevail simply because of 'greeness' or 'inexpensive'.

Lots of forces will be arrayed against this technology. As Mac states, lots of 'big' (pick your favorite) may favor it...since they will still be in the sales loop, but the IPPs? They are going to have a meltdown....and here in California, we have aggressive state supported research added to the mix.

I'm going to ask the city what it takes to go 'off grid' electrically. I'll bet that even if they GAVE me the methane system, it'd still cost a bundle. Who knows what loops you may have to jump thru? Do you have to have some kind of environmental report? Will you need to be permitted as a power producer? It may be easier out of the city or in county. The Indian Reservations will also get a vote, if they want it.

I like the technology....I did some light reading. If I could lease a small house-size unit...of say 400kwh capacity per month, then I'd love to see how it worked.

But, it ain't gonna be easy.

Here is link to Bloom Energy.

The 'Electricity Server' idea is pretty neat. The Unit in question is of manageable size, but certainly, at 100kw of 'neighborhood' size not individual home.

http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/

Leaving the current wiring in place and having a grid of these guys would theoretically work.

I wonder how well this idea scales up or down? Could it be made even semi-portable? Or how about a 5 or 10kw size for marine or jobsite use?

I'm not sure about advantage of this technology (other than size). Solid oxide fuel cells used by Bloom Energy have efficiency up to 60% while standard gas turbines have also 60% efficiency.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell was similar hot technology that ended up being a fiasco. Not only for security reasons but also for poor efficiency (in order of 10%) making it a really dirty fuel. Efficiency can be improved obtaining hydrogen by running hot steam thru the methane or coal containing methane but then huge amounts of CO2 would be produced.

Well, even if you use a gas turbine, such as GE, Seimens, Mitsubishi, Rolls Royce or Mitsui 7 series or the like, with new heat rates below 7, which acutally ups the effciency, you still need to put that power over transmission lines, which creates a rather sizeable line loss in the transmission of power. This would allow for production of power, at the source of use, and would not have any line loss. That means it's in reality much more efficient.

Also, you forget that if methane is used for these units, the first power units to be taken offline will be No 2 and No 7 Oil based units, then baseload coal units, that create HUGE amounts of CO2. Gas fired units will remain in the qeue for back up. Also, nothing is more expensive in the power business than the constrution and maintenence of transmission lines. That cost should be greatly reduced to eliminated.

Also, the efficiency of these now is 60% comparable to existing combined cycle natural gas fired generation, plus the upside of no transmission which makes them much cheaper, since you are not only not paying for the line loss, but for the cost of transmission across the utilities power grid. The more this efficiency goes up, the more in the money this gets. Even with a subsequent rise in gas cost that could be expected from increased Nat Gas demand, you are still way in the money since the US is now SO LONG nat gas. Also, the increase would not be 1:1, since it would be offset by large generation units that would have used natural gas being taken off line.

Macdadtexas, I remember when what my relative in London said in 70's after highly publicized push for much cheaper gas heating instead of electric heating. He said "Now when I finaly installed gas furnance gas cost doubled. They are not stupid"

Distributed energy sources to avoid transmission losses (if there aren't any in gas pipelines by friction and leaks) is good but solar is good as well since the peak demand for energy comes around noon while residential power can be returned to grid for credit. Silicon solar cell prices are dropping, sand is widely available and panels last 25 years. China is powering whole villages/towns with local solar power stations (in addition to nuclear power plants they build).

Some countries invest heavily in alternative energy. Denmark for instance, gets 20% of their energy from the wind.