Bloom Energy is a Silicon Valley startup that unveiled on Wednesday its Bloom Energy Server which is a collection of fuel cells that can generate electricity at a low cost. A box the size of a pickup truck is made up of mainly sand and uses a electrochemical reaction between oxygen and natural gas to produce electricity.

This can be  an innovative advancement because it only uses solid oxide fuel cells and does not require any sun or wind and is twice as efficient as burning natural gas. The company was founded in 2001 and has about $400 million from venture capitals. The servers can provide electricity at 9 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour compared to 14 cents for power from the grid. This can give you back your return on investment in three to five years which is extremely good compared to the other green alternatives. Solar and wind technologies take a lot of up front costs and investments and makes it hard to justify the costs. Even with government incentives, solar power for homes still requires too much upfront costs especially since it takes at least 10 years to recouperate the costs. This can be a useful tool to provide portable electricity and also be useful to help bring electricity to poverty places that dont currently have electricity.

via SFGate