Fuel Cells To Power Your Home In 5 Years For $3K?

There has been a flurry of media attention being given to Bloom Energy as they get ready to come out of stealth mode with their Bloom Box fuel cell technology.  Bloom Energy has been developing their fuel cell for almost a decade and has received approximately $400M in capital investment from some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.

K.R. Sridhar, the company's rocket scientist founder, believes that his fuel cells will be able to power your home in five years at a price tag of around $3,000.  In order to get there, they're going to have to drive the cost of production way down.  The company has already signed up some very big names with deployments at Google, eBay and FedEx to name a few. The recent state and federal tax benefits that have been created to spur the industry have helped these companies cut the acquisition cost down from the estimated $700,000 price tag for these installs.

The following video, which aired on CBS' 60 Minutes on February 21, 2010, gives a very good overview of the technology behind the Bloom Box as well as the background of the company.

What do you think? Is K.R.'s vision realistic or can the utility companies stop worrying that their business model is about to go through a major disruption? Let me know in the comments.