Sorry but this is just an attempt to collect funds it would seem!

They are heating up a silicon plate to act as a conduit for oxygen. A solid electrolyte. Pretty clever, but it also means it needs to be kept very hot, which means slow start up time and possible safety concerns.

It’s a solid oxide fuel cell. That’s what it is.

In the 60 Minutes piece, Sridhar said it was twice the efficiency of a power plant. But that doesn’t make sense as combined-cycle plants using natural gas can run 55-60% efficiency. So I assume he means the 30% one could get from a smaller turbine (like a Capstone turbine). So their efficiency claim is probably 60%, which is in line with other solid oxide fuel cells.

In the end, it’s all about cost. Sridhar wants to get the box down to $2,000. Since 2 boxes are needed for an American home, that means each box produces 500-1000 Watts. Call it 1,000 Watts. The home would still need some kind of buffer for surge uses, not sure how that will work. Anyway, the cost GOAL for the Bloom box is $2,000/kW. We already can do that now with combined cycle plants (albeit on a much larger scale). I guess they think distributed power has other advantages (there are some, like making use of the waste heat perhaps) but this doesn’t seem to be a slam-dunk technology-wise. The are just burning natural gas more efficiently.