PROJECT EASY GREEN

Heat from the sun–along with fancy catalysts and fine-tuned collectors for capturing heat from the sun–could one day let you produce hydrogen at home.

Duke University professor Nico Holz has created a prototype solar thermal system that effectively splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Holz claims that the system is 28.5 percent efficient in summer and 18.5 percent efficient in the winter, which he claims bests similar systems powered by ordinary solar thermal collectors or PV panels.

He estimates that it would cost $7,900 or so to install.

Hydrogen remains one of the most controversial topics in green energy. Right now, it's expensive to produce and most industrial hydrogen producers emit incredible amounts of carbon dioxide. That's because they harvest it by cracking methane molecules. It is also difficult to transport. Hydrogen fuel cells are additionally incredibly expensive and don't last long.

In other words, there are lot of negatives. On the plus side of the ledger is promise. If hydrogen can be produced cheaply from water, the relatively light gas could become a lightweight, ubiquitous medium for storing electrons. Homes and cars would contain canisters of hydrogen. When electricity was needed to run the TV or recharge the batteries in your EV, hydrogen gas could be run through a fuel cell membrane to harvest electrons.

The roadblocks to hydrogen nirvana include finding 1) a cheap source of energy for splitting water 2) catalysts that will reduce the amount of energy required to pull the oxygen atom from the two hydrogens in a water molecule and 3) a system that will let the process flow continuously.

Several companies such as Signa Chemistry and research departments at major universities like Purdue have been toiling away at coming up with a dream catalysts. Sodium is one of the several candidates.

Others, like MIT spin-off Sun Catalytix have been trying to devise a low-energy production system along with catalysts.

While Sun Catalytix and Duke's Holz both want to harness the power of the sun, they appear to be taking different paths. Sun Catalytix employs a solar panel, which harvests electrons from sunlight, as a source of power. Holz uses heat. PV or thermal? It's one of the big divides in the solar industry. Some companies like ZenithSolar combine both thermal and PV. Conceivably, one could combine PV and thermal technologies in a hydrogen system too.

The system consists of a series of copper tubes brushed with thin layers of aluminum and aluminum oxide. A mixture of methanol and water flows inside the tubes and gets heat up by the sun. In the end, this allows the temperatures inside the tubes to rise to 200 Celsius, far higher than the 70 degrees Celsius achieved in conventional solar tubes. Catalysts are added and, voila, hydrogen.

Fuel cell maker Bloom Energy will open a factory on the site of a mothballed auto plant in Delaware and begin to sell fuel cells in that state.

Delaware has a portfolio standard that seeks to get 25 percent of the state's capacity from renewable sources by 2025. Governor Jack Markell is pushing to get fuel cells added to the definition of "renewable." It's not impossible. President Obama in his State of the Union speech argued for a "clean" energy standard that includes nuclear, clean coal and gas, instead of a "renewable" standard. Bloom's fuel cells convert gas to electricity onsite and are more efficient in most cases than converting gas at a central power plant and delivering the power through the grid.

Local utility Delmarva Power has signed a contract to buy 30 megawatts worth of Bloom boxes. Thirty megawatts will mean 100 Bloom Energy Servers. Bloom has been selling the servers for around $700,000 to $800,000 each.

The Delaware experiment will be an interesting test for fuel cells. Right now, Bloom largely — in fact, almost exclusively — sells its fuel cells in California because cumulative federal and state credits can come to a whopping $8.25 a watt. Delaware likely won't match that: some of the California incentives were put in place before the current era of austerity. Some estimate that Bloom's boxes cost close to $12 a watt. Thus, the price will have to come down to become commercially viable, even with a reasonable level of subsides from Delaware. If the company can sell them there, it will be an indication that the economics of mass manufacturing are helping to reduce the cost.

Last month, Bloom also appointed Girlish Paranjpe to head up international sales. Additionally, Bloom has begun to sell its fuel cells as a service to take some of the sting out of the initial investment.

The 200,000-square-foot plant is an old Chrysler plant. Delaware has two old auto plants. Fisker Automotive took over the other. Hence the nickname "The Old Factory State" you see on those new license plates. It's also probably not a coincidence that both Bloom and Fisker come out of the portfolio of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Once a VC firm links one deal with a state, others follow. Three Khosla Ventures portfolio companies have inked manufacturing deals laced with incentives with Mississippi.

UPDATE: The Delaware plant is additive. In April, Bloom announced it was expanding its Sunnyvale, Calif. facility to 210,000 square feet. The expanded facility would employ 1,000, the company said. (Earlier, we theorized that Delaware might replace California.) With these two plants, Bloom will have substantial factory capacity.

At the time, Bloom said that 120 boxes had been deployed around the state. We have calls in and will keep you posted.