The state of Tennessee just got its first Bloom “Energy Server”, which turns any gaseous fuels into electricity using its cheaper new kind of fuel cell. Installed in collaboration with the TVA and the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, these 100 KW Bloom Boxes have just been installed on the top floor of the partnering EPB parking garage.

The University’s Smart Grid pioneer SimCenter National Center for Computational Engineering will monitor the performance of the technology, the University is reporting. The Bloom box is capable of making zero carbon electricity, given the right fuel. The campuses of major companies like eBay, Google, Staples, and FedEx are already running relatively uneventful pilot programs testing it.

The Bloom Box is fuel-agnostic. It could be used with landfill gas, or biogas from MSW or other waste gases, to make zero carbon electricity. It turns natural gas into electricity with a lower carbon footprint than a gas-fired power plant (which emits between 1.3 and 1.5 lbs of CO2 per kilowatt hour) with half the emissions at only 0.8 lbs of CO2 per kwh. (more…)