If you can’t make PDD’s meeting with Senator Coons in New Castle tonight, then perhaps you can attend the Public Service Commission’s hearings on Bloom Energy this week. The PSC hearings this week are tonight at the Cannon Building Hearing Room, 861 Silver Lake Boulevard, Dover, Delaware at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at the Carvel State Office Building Auditorium, Mezzanine Level, 820 N. French Street, Wilmington, Delaware, also at 7 p.m.
These hearings will concern Bloom Energy’s planned fuel-cell factory in Newark, which would cost Delmarva customers a surcharge of $1 a month for the next 21 years. This surcharge would fund the subsidy to Bloom Energy, which will allow it to build the fuel cell factory at the old Chrysler assembly plant and hire 900 workers. The factory would manufacture “Bloom Boxes,” which are pictured on the front page below.
These Bloom Boxes will contain hundreds of fuel cells that use a chemical reaction to generate electricity. In addition to the Bloom Energy factory at the old Chrysler plant, Delaware plans to place two clusters of Bloom Boxes on two sites in New Castle County adjacent to Delmarva electrical substaions. These clusters themselves will generate approximately 30 megawatts of power for the electrical grid, which is enough to power approximately 25,000 homes.