Bloom is seeking to solve the energy crisis by storing renewable sources. Imagine using water with the process of electrolysis to produce electricity from the hydrogen within H2O. At Bloom Energy, their fuel cells already use a hydrogen rich mixture that can operate on this renewable hydrogen. Hydrogen power is imminent at Bloom Energy.
Video Synopsis
Bloom Energy Announces Hydrogen-Powered Energy Servers
Video length: 3:32
Speakers
- Arne Ballantine, Vice President of System Engineering, Bloom Energy
Transcript
Arne Ballantine:
So why are we talking so much about hydrogen? Well, let’s take a step back and talk about the energy problem, where we’re working very hard to have more and more renewable sources of energy. What we may not all think about today is on a very sunny or a very windy day. It can happen that there’s more renewable energy than certain regions can use. And so oftentimes what happens is those assets are turned down. Please make a little less solar power, please make a little less wind power. And of course that’s not what we would like to have happen. So then as good thinkers, you’re imagining, boy, I sure like to store that extra energy and not turn them down. And so storing energy sounds like batteries, and of course, batteries are a way to solve that problem. But as we all know, you know, you can’t try to start your car all night long, that battery will drain. And I think we’ve all experienced what happens when your phone is empty. So we know that batteries can have a limited capacity. What are some ways to store energy for longer periods of time? And that’s where hydrogen is very handy.
Imagine water, water is hydrogen with oxygen. There’s a process called electrolysis where I take electricity and I apply it to the water using the electricity. I split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. Um, we’ve got a lot of oxygen here around us on planet earth. So I’ll just let that go, but I’m gonna keep the hydrogen, I’ll keep the hydrogen. And then, in the dead of night or the dark of winter, or however you like it, I’ll take my hydrogen and I’ll run it through a fuel cell such as a bloom energy energy server. And that will very efficiently take my hydrogen, combine it with air. I’ll get electricity right when I want it, and I’ll get my water back. That’s a very nice way to, you can kind of imagine the 24 hour clock I’m taking this extra renewable energy and I’m moving it to when I want it later in the day or later on in the season.
And I’m using very reliable fuel cell generators that’ll operate 24 hours a day to enable that final step. So that’s why it’s very exciting for us at Bloom energy. Our fuel cells already use a hydrogen rich mixture inside. So with some careful engineering, we’ve come up with a straightforward upgrade so that all of the projects we’ve already deployed can operate on this renewable hydrogen, uh, that will be available. Um, and of course if it’s any combination of pure hydrogen coming from an electrolyzer or even some hydrogen that’s blended into the natural gas pipeline, all of those would be quite fine. Now you may wonder how soon is this sort of thing gonna happen? Well, there are already some 200 electrolyzers online making hydrogen in different places around the world. In Korea, there are 25 hydrogen plants being commissioned with 700 kilometers of pipeline infrastructure, and other projects in Japan and other countries. So as you can see, this is imminent here at bloom. Our thinking is that within a year we’ll have commercial units operating on these sources of hydrogen that will become more and more readily available.