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The California Public Utility Commission voted yesterday to approve projects by Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison to install utility-owned solid oxide and molten-carbonate fuel cells on several University of California and California State University campuses.

PG&E’s $20. 3 million project consists of the installation and operation of three fuel cell generating facilities with a total capacity of 3.0 megawatts at two California State University campuses - CSU East Bay and San Francisco State University. SF State would get both a 1.4 MW molten carbonate fuel cell and a 200-kW solid oxide fuel cell (made by Bloom Energy). CSU East Bay would host a 1.4-MW molten carbonate fuel cell. The molten carbonate fuel cells (made by FuelCell Energy) would be combined-heat-and-power units that would aid the campus’ thermal load, such as heating the Olympic-sized swimming pool at CSU East Bay. Water by-product would be used for landscape irrigation. PG&E says the plants have an estimated useful life of 10 years.

PG&E told the CPUC that it plans to coordinate with the two universities to implement educational outreach programs to maximize the educational benefits of the fuel cell facilities. For example, PG&E would install an educational kiosk at each campus, coordinate signage and educational material, help develop class curriculum, host tours of the facilities, and facilitate educational and community outreach. CSU East Bay says it plans to develop multidisciplinary curriculum and research-based learning opportunities centered on the fuel cell system. SF State claims it will use the fuel cell project  to enhance its graduate and undergraduate business, engineering and environmental studies programs in sustainability.

SCE’s $19.1 million project is similar to PG&E’s. SCE will install, own and operate three fuel cell units (makers unknown) with a combined capacity of up to 3.0 MW on three other California state university campuses. CSU San Bernardino and CSU Long Beach would each get a CHP system of 1 to 1.4 MW. UC Santa Barbara would get one 200-kW solid oxide fuel cell that would demonstrate an electricity-only high-efficiency SOFC where the waste heat is used in the generation process.

These projects didn’t get approved without resistance. The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates and The Utility Reform Network protested several points. For example, SCE requested authorization to use $10.8 million in unspent and uncommitted Self Generation Incentive Program funds to pay for 50 percent of their capital costs.

The CPUC said, “Nice try SCE, but no dice.” That’s because it agreed with DRA and TURN that the SGIP monies are earmarked for distributed energy systems installed on the customer’s side of the utility meter and to achieve “market transformation.” The two groups also noted that because utilities, such as SCE, are supposed to be administering the SGIP program, opening the door to them to tap these funds would create a huge conflict of interest.

DRA and TURN also noted that the small scale of these projects would do little, if anything, to advance fuel cell technology. Finally, DRA questioned the educational value of the projects and cited the lack of supportive evidence about how the fuel cells will be used to further class work, and contended that it would be more economical to transport students to visit an installed fuel cell at another site.

As the New York Times reports, the decision also overturns a March ruling by administrative law judge Dorothy J. Duda who found the cost of the projects, which ultimately are financed by the utilities’ customers, to be excessive. “It is unreasonable to spend three times the price paid to renewable generation for the proposed Fuel Cell Projects, which are nonrenewable and fueled by natural gas,” Duda wrote in her decision.

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Like shootin’ fish in a barrel. Me, six days ago:

Prediction: Tom will state that Bloom Energy changes everything!

Today from Friedman:

Several months ago, though, Sridhar took me into the parking lot behind Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters and showed me the inside of one of his Bloom Boxes, the size of a small shipping container. Inside were stacks of solid oxide fuel cells, stored in cylinders, and all kinds of whiz-bang parts that I did not understand.

[ . . . ]

Our politics has gotten so impossible lately, too many Americans have stopped dreaming.

Here’s my latest scorecard on Tommy’s ideas:

• Free trade!
• Invade the oil cartels! (aka, Suck On This)
  
• Free trade, except for Silicon Valley!
• Ambien!

Actually, he writes something even more inane today:

All I know is this: If we put a simple price on carbon, these new technologies would have a chance to blossom

There is already a simple price on carbon and TF knows it. Unfortunately, it is mispriced and artificial because of various policies, taxes and subsidies that will continue because there is an army of lobbyists screaming OMG! REAL CARBON PRICING IS THE END OF CIVILIZATION, and they know they have pet-dog pundits like Friedman who will provide the cover they need.

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Today was Bloom Energy’s big media extravaganza and it seems like they were aiming for something on the order of what Apple or Microsoft would try to pull off. The stage was shared by big name politicians (Schwarzenegger and Powell) the online gods (Google and eBay), the movers and shakers in the investor class (Kleiner Perkings Caulfield & Byers and Morgan Stanley) and an impressive array of mega-brand customers (FedEx, Coca-Cola, Walmart, Staples and Bank of America).

Generally speaking this is all great stuff for those of us in the ceramics business. Incredible, really.

But what did anybody actually learn? Maybe that Bloom has a great marketing team? But, we already knew that was true based on Sunday’s exposure, courtesy of 60 Minutes.

What new information did we get about Bloom’s technology/engineering achievements and business plan? Not much.

It’s one thing to try to throw a coming-out party like Apple would. It’s another thing to pull it off when you have no track record of actually bringing an insanely great product to market at a price people are willing to pay, all while beating your competitors to the punch.

Some of the technology questions may be relatively easy. One expert tells me the ceramic electrolyte layer is is probably yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ), the green “ink” is NiO-YSZ serving as the anode (NexTech already offers an ink like this) and the black “ink” is a cathode layer made of lanthanum strontium manganite (LSM). What’s less clear is how Bloom solved stack expansion and seal problems that plague other SOFC makers. (Solved them in the sense that these units will perform reliably for years and years.)

But, Jonathan Fahey at Forbes, gets closer to the heart of the matter:

So while Bloom Energy may have some very promising technology to show off, we almost certainly will hear that its business hinges on a plan to lower the cost of its fuel cell by some large amount in some short period of time. It could be that Bloom Energy has the money and the brains to pull it off. Maybe it has already pulled it off. But if that business plan sounds familiar, it’s because that is the same refrain heard from solar companies, biofuels companies and fuel cell makers around the world.

[. . .]

It’s difficult to design components that can survive for decades in those conditions, especially the ancillary components that take the electricity out of the cell - for cheap. Then there’s the bugaboo of many a clean tech company: Designing a manufacturing process that can produce enough high quality devices to push costs down.

United Technologies produces a phosphoric acid fuel cell commercially and is working on a number of other fuel cell programs. Its fuel cell sells for $4,500 per kilowatt, and the company says it needs to get to $2,500 before it can be a real success

“We’ve figured out the durability problems,” says Mike Brown, a vice president at UTC Power, the United Technologies unit that makes fuel cells. “We haven’t figured out the cost problem yet.”

Fahey thinks that the unsubsidized cost of Bloom’s systems is about $9,000-$10,000 per kilowatt, so its not clear why Bloom’s units would be financially sucessful when UTC Power is struggling.

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CBS now has posted links to the original Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cell story, plus several other “web extras” that expand a little on what was covered in the SOFC broadcast:

Full Segment: The Bloom Box

Web Extra: The Magic Box

Web Extra: Plug-In Power Plant

Web Extra: Naming The Bloom Box

Web Extra: A Skeptic’s View

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In case you missed it, in his 60 Minutes interview on Bloom Energy’s solid oxide fuel cells, company founder K.R. Sridhar recounts how he first got into the field by devising a method for NASA to use solid oxide carbon dioxide electrolysis to produce O₂ for future Mars explorers. He says he basically reversed the engineering of the O₂ production method to devise his SOFC components.

For those that are curious about that work, here are a few key links to his work (along with G. Tao and C.L. Chan) on that topic:

Oxygen production on Mars using solid oxide electrolysis (Solid State Ionics, 1997)

Study of carbon dioxide electrolysis at electrode/electrolyte interface: Part I. Pt/YSZ interface (Solid State Ionics, 2004)

Study of carbon dioxide electrolysis at electrode/electrolyte interface: Part II. Pt-YSZ cermet/YSZ interface (Solid State Ionics, 2004)

Sridhar also has pubished in ACerS’ journals:

Experimental Method for a Dynamic Biaxial Flexural Strength Test of Thin Ceramic Substrates (Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 2002)

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