a midway bikelog

I’m very interested and excited to learn more about the Bloom Box tomorrow, purported to be the first high efficiency wireless powerplant capable of replacing our current power grid.

So far it’s only been revealed on this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes show, but apparently Google, eBay, FedEx and a few others have been using versions of the box for several months already. The details are secret, but it sounds like a material refinement of a typical fuel cell, providing twice the efficiency and able to use a wide range of fuels, from natural gas to plant rot methane. Current fuel cells use hydrogen, which has a high cost to produce and obvious logistical problems what with the explosions and all.

The wireless aspect of this is just as fascinating to me, and i wonder how that works in a practical sense. If there was, say, a neighborhood Bloom Box or one in the alley, would every house have some sort of receiver that the home fuse box connected to? It’s a little unsettling, the idea of wireless power signals flying through the neighborhood, but maybe that’s how people felt when radio was just a new idea too.

The idea of the Bloom Box inevitably makes me think of the Stirling Engine. Like the Bloom Box, it was designed to run on any fuel (way moreso than the original Diesel), including solid fuels like wood. Stirlings don’t have the sort of acceleration and power curve of the internal combustion engine, but were meant more as a more efficient version of the steam engine, used in applications where the engine runs at a relatively constant rate and power is managed with a coupling clutch. There are modern Stirling-powered generators available right now, along with a few other commercial products, but adoption has been limited to a niche market.

Still, you have to love the idea of electrical and mechanical power that are compatible with a variety of widely available fuels. A Box in every basement, a Stirling under every hood, and the on- or off-grid question won’t even make sense. It’s easy to be skeptical, but at least with the 60-Minutes piece, the skeptic they included was all about handwaving and big corporate takeovers, nothing specific (though to be fair, there aren’t any published tech specifics to attack). Count me among the very optimistic with this one.