Originally Published:Monday,
February 22nd 2010, 1:15 PM
Updated: Monday, February 22nd 2010, 3:11 PM
K.R. Sridhar has an energy plan anyone could get
behind - electricity in a box.
That's
the promise of the "Bloom box," the fuel-cell-powered invention
coming from the Silicon
Valley start up, Bloom Energy.
"In
five to ten years, we would like to be in every home," Sridhar told Leslie Stahl
on "60 Minutes" Sunday night.
The
"box" generates its power wirelessly through a combination of oxygen
and a fossil fuel - natural gas, bio-gas, etc. It is presently being tested by
companies such as Google,
WalMart,
FedEx and eBay, who have
shelled out hundreds of thousands for the "green" machines, the CBS News program
reported.
Smaller
versions could be used to power individual homes, and would be environmentally
friendly.
Sridhar
initially developed the idea while working with NASA, as a means of
producing oxygen for astronauts landing on Mars. However, when that mission was
scrapped, he altered the device to produce energy instead.
"It
sounds awfully dazzling," Stahl told the
Indian-born scientist.
"It
is real," he said. "It works."
Not
everyone is buying into Bloom Energy's boasts for its product, which it plans
to unveil to the world in less than two days, according to its presently-sparse
www.bloomenergy.com Web site.
"I'm
hopeful, but I'm skeptical," Michael
Kanellos, editor-in-chief of GreenTech Media, told "60 Minutes."
"People have tried fuel cells since the 1830s."
Bloom's
efforts have been touted by the likes of former Secretary of State Colin
Powell and former Vice President Al Gore. It also
received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from John Doerr's
capital firm, Kleiner Perkins. The firm developed Netscape, Amazon and Google,
but also backed the less-impressive Segway personal two-wheeled transportation
vehicle.
"That's
my job," Doerr said on "60 Minutes." "To find entrepreneurs
who are going to change the world and then help them."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/60minutes/main6221135.shtml
View 60 Minutes report on this new device
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n&tag=related;photovideo