As 2022 came to a close, an important regulatory filing in Taipei confirmed that Bloom Energy was embarking into another international market – Taiwan. Bloom and Unimicron reached a deal for the chip substrate and printed circuit board manufacturer to deploy 10 megawatts (MW) of Bloom’s solid oxide fuel cell energy server technology to get secure and low carbon electricity to support Unimicron’s growing operations.
“We are knocking on doors across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”
Tim Schweikert
It is the fourth market in Asia for Bloom, along with the Republic of Korea, Japan and India. It preceded news in January 2023 that Bloom was launching marketing initiatives in Spain and Portugal and followed news in 2022 that Bloom had reached agreements to deploy its energy platform to two customers in Italy.
“Signing these deals is incredibly satisfying because we know we have a great product our customers need to secure low-carbon power,” says Tim Schweikert, senior managing director of international business development, Bloom Energy. “Our sales and business development teams are growing, and we are knocking on doors across Europe, Asia and the Middle East.”
According to Bloom’s 10-K, the company’s balance of U.S. vs international business is roughly equal. The company has more energy servers deployed in the U.S., but it gets slightly more revenue from international customers.
Here’s a summary of recent key international activities:
- Spain and Portugal: Bloom announced in January 2023 that it had signed a deal with Telam Partners, a leading senior advisory firm specialized in the financing and market entry of energy, infrastructure, and technology projects, to pursue market opportunities for both the Bloom Electrolyzer and its Energy Server™.
- Taiwan: Bloom plans to start deploying its energy servers at Unimicron plants by mid-year 2023 and to have installed up to 10MW of power in the company by 2026.
- Italy: In November 2022, Bloom partnered with Cefla, a leading Italian engineering, procurement and construction company, to deploy multiple megawatts of fuel cells through 2025. In June 2022, Bloom announced a 1MW installation of fuel cells at Ferrari’s manufacturing facility and headquarters in Italy.
- Switzerland: MSC Group, the leading privately held Swiss-based shipping and logistics conglomerate, put Bloom’s energy platform on its MSC World Europa to lower emissions when the state-of-the-art cruise ship is in port. MSC World Europa was delivered from France’s Chantiers de l’Atlantique in October 2022.
- India: Bloom struck a deal with Nxtra Data in September 2022 to deploy fuel cells at Nxtra’s data center in Bengaluru. The fuel cells will initially run on natural gas but could switch to 50% hydrogen in the future.
- South Korea: Bloom began commercial operations in the Republic of Korea in 2018 and has grown its footprint to more than 400MW of deployed Energy Servers across South Korea. SK ecoplant Co., Ltd. serves as the primary distributor of Bloom systems in Korea. The two companies are collaborating on the creation of hydrogen innovation centers to advance green hydrogen commercialization. In April 2022, Bloom made its first international deployment of an electrolyzer in Gumi, South Korea.
