Did anyone else here see the 60 Minutes segment last night on Bloom
Energy? They are a CA based start-up company that is supposed to
have a revolutionary fuel cell technology that is simple and cost
effective. They showed a cube that was maybe 6" on each side and
said that it was sufficient to power a house. It runs off nat gas,
methane, possibly other carbon based fuels. The goal of the company
is to have one in each house, business, etc and eliminate the
distribution grid.

The company has about $100mil backing from Perkins-Elmer, the well
known venture capital firm and will need around $400mil to get it into
full development. As usual, their was a lot of missing
information. Like at today's rates, what does the nat gas cost
compared to an electric bill for the same amount of energy. Or what
kind of greenhouse gases does it emit. The founder came off as a nut
at one point when he stated his goal was to have every house using one
of these within 5 to 10 years.

They have a website at Bloomenergy.com, but I don't think there is
much info there. If you want to see the actual 60 mins video you can
probably find it with google.

On the other hand they showed real refrigerator size units being test
run by companies like FedEx. The home size unit was anticipated to
sell for $3000.