Nowadays, technology develop rapidly to meet the luxurious necessity and natural need of human kind. Power grid was once a great invention in human history as everyone were enjoying the comfortable life with all kind of electrical appliance in home or office.

But, history mean in the past. Bloom Energy would change the history of electricity generation with the latest technology of  Solid Oxide Fuel Cell. With the continuous supplies of fuel, heat and air, the electricity generation process in SOFC (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell) will continue and non-stop.

A brief explanation on how the SOFC works can be found here.

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell is actually one of the fuel cell technologies that generate clean and reliable energy. There are few type of fuel cell available in the market but the legacy fuel cell technologies like proton exchange membranes (PEMs), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs), and molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), have all required expensive precious metals, corrosive acids, or hard to contain molten materials. It makes the fuel cell technologies hardly to be adopted in daily life.

Expert had agreed that Solid Oxide Fuel Cell is the most efficient fuel cell. With low cost ceramic materials, and extremely high electrical efficiencies, SOFCs can deliver attractive economics. As Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has a high temperature output, it still cannot be fully adopted in industrial or house use. Bloom Energy has solved these engineering challenges. With breakthroughs in materials science, and revolutionary new design, Bloom’s SOFC technology is a cost effective, all-electric solution.

Bloom Energy SOFC overweigh hydrogen fuel cell in four main ways:

• Low cost materials – SOFC use a common sand-like powder instead of precious
  metals like platinum or corrosive materials like acids.
• High electrical efficiency –SOFC convert fuel into electricity at nearly twice the
  rate of some legacy technologies
• Fuel flexibility – SOFC is capable of using either renewable or fossil fuels
• Reversible – Bloom’s technology is capable of both energy generation and storage

Energy Server Architecture

Each Energy server consists of thousand of fuel cell. Each fuel cell is a flat solid ceramic square made from a common sand-like "powder”.

Each of the fuel cell is capable of producing 25Watts. To generate more power, fuel cell are sandwiched. along with metal interconnect plates into a fuel cell “stack”. A few “stack” cascaded together is enough to power an average house. Sound nice!

     Figure: the component of Energy Server

Information via Bloom Energy

PS: Bloom energy SOFC only produce small amount of CO2 as the side product (claimed by Bloom Energy).

 Time pass like rocket in sky, it’s time to pay our electric bill for this month. I think some of you may feel headache every time you receive the electric bill for your family. As i live in Malaysia, a country with only summer, air-conditioning is a most common electrical device found in every house and yet the air-conditioning contribute the most in electric bill.

Actually, today’s topic is not related to air-conditioning but the Intel Intelligent Home Management Proof of Concept which claimed to have the ability to save energy. I come across a green tech article this morning and it’s about this smart device embedded in your home to save energy and reduce electric usage.

Intel Intelligent Home Management device has awesome functions such as leaving a message to your family member, notification on your household, a check on power consumption and etc. Like most of you may do it at home, you can leave a message to your family member in the this electronic dashboard in case you miss the chance of meeting them.

With Intel Intelligent Home Management device, you can control your household with a simple click on the electronic dashboard.

Functions of Intel Intelligent Home Management System:

1. Activate your house security system and monitor your house with one central dashboard

2. Reduce utility cost – follow the suggestion provided

3. Remote management – control your home via mobile phone or PC when you are away

4. Reminder – remind you to turn off appliances before you leave home

5. Energy Forecast – with suggestion to avoid using appliance during peak hour 

6. Energy Manager – set your goal and get known of the method to achieve your goal

7. Smart Thermostat – as i mentioned above, biggest part of your electric bill come from heating or cooling system in your home. With Intel Home Dashboard Concept’s Smart Thermostat, it adapt its setting based on the weather condition, current energy price and evolving usage pattern.

I wish my home is equipped with Intel Intelligent Home Management system too, then i can relax and simply click on the home dashboard to manage my household appliance. Technology make life easier and relaxing.

Ricky become an environmentalist recently? Yes, i admit that environmental issue become part of my must-read reading material recently. I have subscribed Green Tech News from Cnet which provide me a lot of information about green product.

I assume many of you already watch movie 2012 and lot of the audience impressed by the computer graphic, ocean water strike the mainland, outbreak of giant volcano and massive earthquake. All of these disaster occur due to the moving earth core, interchanging of earth magnetic field and sun activities. No body can predict what will happen in the future , but in fact all of these circumstances may happens if people keep on abusing natural resources. No doubt human activities is the main cause of Earth destruction, so is our responsibility to reduce the pollution caused by Human THEMSELVES!!!!!

One of the main pollution caused by human activities is air pollution. Generation of electricity using fuel, green gas emitted by vehicle and open air burning by brainless people contribute a lot to air pollution. Yet, human still wasting a lot of electricity on lighting, never-shut-down desktop/laptop and etc.

Today i come across a meaningful article about eco-friendly fuel cell ,manufactured by Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies. This fuel cell is called Hydrofill system which consists of a Hydrostik cartridges and MiniPak. Hydrostik is used to extract hydrogen gas from water and store it at a cartridges while MiniPak pulls hydrogen from the cartridges and a produces an electrical current. MiniPak can charge a device/gadget through USB port and the company provide a optional A-A battery charger.

The Hydrofill system classified as a eco-friendly product due to it’s only produce water vapor as side product. No air pollution is produced by using this Hydrofill system.