Silicon Valley doesn’t just produce innovative web companies — it’s also a mecca for the green tech boom. Bloom Energy, which launches officially on Wednesday, has built a refrigerator-sized box that can power your whole house.

Bloom Energy has actually been operating for 8 years, raising $400 million in funding from VCs including Kleiner Perkins (investors in Netscape, Amazon, Google and others). Its “Bloom Box” houses fuel cells
that run on oxygen plus natural gas, landfill gas, bio-gas or even
solar.

The company’s first customer was Google, which has been powering a datacenter on 4 Bloom Boxes for 18 months. Google’s boxes run on natural gas. eBay is also a customer — the company has 5 Bloom Boxes in
San Jose, which it says have saved $100,000 in energy costs over 9
months.

The Bloom Box got its first TV appearance on CBS’ 60 Minutes tonight, which will no doubt drive interest in the launch. Look out for more news on Wednesday.

What do you think? Could Bloom Boxes power the future?

Bloom Box Video: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6228923n&tag=api

Tags: CBS, bloom, box, energy, house, power

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Comment by Glenn on February 28, 2010 at 8:43pm: I saw that same special, Nines. It got me wondering;

I wonder if they could build a smaller version of that and power a vehicle off of it; say, a car or a pickup? It seems like that might be quite a use for the technology as well, if they're as fuel efficient as was stated.

Comment by cliffystones on February 24, 2010 at 7:06am: The Missourian in me says 'Show Me". It does sound like a great idea, if it's for real let's just hope that the "Men in Black" don't try to buy him off.

Comment by Ninesvnsicks on February 22, 2010 at 1:59am: I just saw this earlier on 60 minutes was a very kewl special sounds great.

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