SAN FRANCISCO – A secretive Silicon Valley startup working on a new way to produce cleaner energy is taking the wraps off its product: a huge box of fuel cells that it hopes will allow homes and businesses to generate their own electricity.
The technology from Bloom Energy, already used at major companies such as Google Inc. and eBay Inc., has been the subject of intense anticipation because it promises to produce more power — with less environmental damage — than other fuel cells on the market.
Yet analysts warn that the technology has yet to be widely proven.
"Fuel cells have always held the promise that they're going to be this huge thing, but so far it hasn't really materialized," said Shu Sun, an energy technologies analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "What we are seeing is some of these fuel cell companies are making inroads into niche industries."
A 2008 study by his firm found that the fuel cell market would reach $1.5 billion by 2015, primarily in wireless telecommunications, recreational vehicles and midsize "distributed generation," which refers to fuel cells that would power, say, a block of apartments rather than individual homes.
