Thaindian News

By Arun Kumar
Washington, Feb 24 (IANS) An India-born rocket scientist is all set to unveil a natural gas-fuelled cell box that promises to provide abundant, cheap, clean electricity to light up most American households within the next 10 years.

K.R. Sridhar, 49, founder of the Silicon Valley clean tech start-up Bloom Energy, will bring out his invention at a big press event Wednesday in San Jose, California on the campus of eBay, one of Bloom’s first customers.

The event will feature a star-studded lineup that includes California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Secretaery of State Colin Powell, a director of his company, eBay CEO John Donahoe, venture capital firm and early Bloom believer John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers.

Sridhar has raised $400 million to produce his magic boxes after eight secretive years of toil. The invention has already created quite a buzz since it was featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday.

A former professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and director of the Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona, Sridhar also served as an advisor to NASA in the areas of nanotechnology and planetary missions. Sridhar initially developed the idea behind the Bloom Box while working with NASA, as a means of producing oxygen for astronauts landing on Mars.

Sridhar argues that a Bloom Box fuelled by natural gas installed in one’s backyard would produce half as much carbon dioxide as a fossil-fuel power plant. As he suggested on “60 Minutes”, one bread loaf-sized unit capable of producing one kilowatt of power could power a single American home.

Sridhar provided the first inside look at his Bloom Box, which contains stacks of fuel cells that generate electricity. Natural gas or biofuel are pumped into the Bloom Box to produce clean, scaled-up, and reliable electricity.

The unit does not vibrate, emits no sound, and has no smell, although Sridhar admits to some initial, but minor, glitches at some installations.

He expects his boxes will cost about $3,000 for consumers. Currently, several large technology companies, such as Google and eBay, have been using Bloom Boxes in limited capacity.

EBay said it has already saved $100,000 in electricity costs since its 5 boxes were installed nine months ago. It even claims that the Bloom boxes generate more power than the 3,000 solar panels at its headquarters.

Sridhar received his Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Madras before moving to the US in the 1980s. He earned an MS in Nuclear Engineering and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, home to such start ups as Netscape.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)