Bloom Energy, a provider of clean power, is changing the way the world generates and consumes energy with fuel cell technology. The California Institute of Technology shares their story of partnering with Bloom Energy and moving towards a clean energy future. Their Pasadena campus utilizes three megawatts of Bloom’s Energy Server® to help them focus on their mission of expanding human knowledge and benefiting society through research and education.
Video Synopsis
Bloom Energy Powers Caltech with Fuel Cell Technology
Video Length: 2:11
Talking Points:
- CalTech’s Core Mission
- Power Purchase Agreement
- Solar Integration
- Distributed Generation
- Greenhouse Gas Reduction
- More Bloom Energy
Speakers:
- Jim Cowell, Associate Vice President for Facilities, California Institute of Technology
- John Onderdonk, Director of Sustainability Programs, California Institute of Technology
Full Transcript
Jim Cowell:
My name is Jim Cowell. I’m the Associate Vice President for facilities at the California Institute of Technology.
CalTech’s Core Mission
John Onderdonk:
Yeah, our core mission here at Caltech is research and education, and all of our sustainability initiatives need to enhance and promote that core mission.
Jim Cowell:
We want to make sure that we minimize our utility costs, so we have the most amount of our resources go to research and education.
John Onderdonk:
And it’s important for us to know where we’re going to be from a cost standpoint in five, ten years down the road.
Jim Cowell:
We will always have the need for about 110 gigawatt hours of electricity every year. We have two megawatts of Bloom right now and that has been here for about five years on the campus. It runs 24/7.
Power Purchase Agreement
The energy that we buy through a power purchase agreement with Bloom, we’re getting at less than the grid price. It’s science that works and it’s commercially available. It’s reliable, it’s economic, and it works right now.
Solar Integration
Bloom Energy Electricity is also integrated with our solar on the campus. We have about 1.3 megawatts of solar. So not only do we get solar power from that, but now we have covered parking up there. So it’s really great.
Distributed Generation
John Onderdonk:
We put a lot of effort into reducing the overall energy load, adding renewables when we can, and then reducing the water consumption as well. By moving toward renewable and distributed generation with Bloom and PV, for example, they don’t use water in the same way that a normal power plant would use, a combustion power plant. So we’re significantly reducing our water consumption on the energy side by deploying those technologies.
Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Jim Cowell:
Of course, being in California, we’re under a lot of pressure to meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, and so we want to make sure we’re doing our part toward that.
More Bloom Energy
We have just signed another PPA with Bloom to add another megawatt of Bloom energy servers to the campus grid.
John Onderdonk:
The more uptime we can have, the more reliance and resiliency in our power system, the better we’re going to be.