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54 comments on Cogeneration At Home: Ceramic Fuel Cells And Bloom Energy
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A fuel burner is still a fuel burner.
The solid oxide fuel cell looks like it will save 60% of the natural gas input for the same electric output, but natural gas is disappearing.
Electricity from massive wind and solar(2 watts renewable per 1 watt of load) for with large scale energy storage and a modest fossil fuel backup will reduce natural gas by up to 80% in studies.
Fuel cells will only make sense in countries with the largest fossil fuel resources.
Renewables first!
See note Fig. 2 below.
http://www.ceere.org/rerl/projects/software/WindScreenPaper.pdf
Natural gas is nice, but hardly required. SOFCs can run on gasified biomass or waste; the Gas Technology Institute ran one on gasified chicken litter.
There are many possibilities for renewable inputs for fuel cells, and the higher the efficiency the less we need and the more we can afford to pay for it.
Thanks for pointing that out EP - I was going to mention this in one post or another, but forgot in the end - you can use biogas to fuel these things - so they then become a more efficient way of using a renewable resource.
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3633
But in any case - more efficient use of reular natural gas shouldn't be sneezed at - its not a panacea, but it does help us transition to energy efficient buildings.
On a semi-realted note, check out this new glass for helping buildings to become energy neutral :
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/03/24/guardian-develops-hyper-insulating-v...
in theory, yes. in practice, not quite. lots of coking and fouling of the system results. for example, a huge supply of waste glycerin from biodiesel production exists. lots of potential energy, but very messy when combusted. same for black liquor from paper production, etc ...
sort of like the reports that someone falls out of an airplane and lives. perhaps, but only for a millisecond after impact.