K.R. Sidhar and His Magic Box
Recently a man in the name of K.R. Sridhar had shown to the
world his Bloom Box which is the most talked about fuel cell-based energy source of 2010. The
project was started about eight years ago with a capital of about $400 million.
The media was taken aback by the press conference in Silicon Valley with people
like California
governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of the crowd. The little boxes
that
is believed to change the world in the future were first used by big
companies like FedEx,
Google, and others. The whole concept of the boxes are that they are
like tiny power plants
set in your own backyard. They are mainly run by any fuel source like
natural gas, solar energy and others as they are used minimally to
create a reaction with oxygen to convert it into electrical energy.
Basically
the power of the Bloom Box come from the ceramic plates that are piled
on top of each other and they produced
very clean electricity for your consumption.
K.R. Sidhar, who's originally from India, is the face of Bloom Energy, the company that invented the Bloom Box. He was formerly a professor
of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the
Space Technologies Laboratory (STL) at the University of Arizona. At
the helm of STL, K.R. Sidhar led the group to gather almost $20 million
in nationally competed R&D contracts. As an advisor for NASA, K.R.
Sidhar also led a team of scientists
to develop an equipment so that human could live in Mars. It is through
that mission that K.R. was able to conceptualize the now known device
he calls Bloom Box.
It
is quite amazing that this scientist can actually make a unit as large
as bread
loaf, which can produce electricity that can power an American home.
Although this device now is
overly hyped, many people are supporting him in his endeavor to promote
clean energy that's simple to use, safe and uses common materials. The
business of manufacturing these fuel cells that can earn about trillion
dollars did come unfazed by skeptics. Their reason is that these fuel
cells are so expensive until they can be produced
in mass scale. Although Google are already using them in their
headquarters, they are
not confident enough to try using it in their servers where their
investments are holed up. There
are also experts that believe that if this company would unveil that
their equipment
produces much cheaper alternative source, then it can survive the
market race.
Dr.
K.R. Sridhar got his Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering with
Honors at the University of Madras in India, as well as his M.S. in
Nuclear Engineering. His Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering was finished
in University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Apart from being a businessman, Dr.
Sridhar is doing work with K-12 children by inspiring them to enjoy
math and science. He is currently residing in Los Gatos, California
with his wife and two children.