Thank you for joining us for Bloom Energy's Analyst Day. To supplement this call, we will be referring to a presentation on the Investor Relations website. The matter that we will be discussing today will include forward-looking statements regarding future events and future financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that we will discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify important risk factors, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic that would cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements. This includes statements about the effects of COVID-19 on the company's business results, financial position, liquidity, demand for our energy server and new applications, timing of new applications, and the supporting market ecosystem and outlook.
We assume no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call. During this call, we may refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and are in addition to and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our quarterly shareholder letter. After the prepared remarks, we will take questions. I would also like to note that we are all dialed in remotely, so we apologize in advance for any audio issues that may occur. With that, we'll begin.
Welcome to Bloom Energy's Analyst Day. Bloom Energy's mission is to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world. We trace our roots to work performed by KR Sridhar, Bloom Energy's founder and CEO, for NASA's Mars Exploration Program. This team built a fuel cell capable of producing air and fuel from electricity generated by a solar panel, with the vision of one day being able to support life on Mars. They soon realized that their technology could have an even greater impact here on Earth. Their innovative energy solution, the Bloom Energy Server, is personalized to meet the specific energy needs of our customers, delivering a combination of reliability and resiliency, sustainability, and cost predictability. Using solid oxide fuel cells, Bloom Energy Servers convert fuel into electricity through an electrochemical process without combustion at the highest efficiency of any power solution available in the world today.
And because the servers come together like building blocks, the modular design allows various configurations to form energy solutions from hundreds of kilowatts to many tens of megawatts. As the demand for reliable, clean electricity grows, we're facing more frequent and extreme natural disasters. Bloom powers customers through power outages without emitting harmful particulate matter, uses no water during operation, utilizes land efficiently, and reduces greenhouse gases. Bloom Energy has deployed hundreds of megawatts across over 700 sites globally and count many Fortune 500 companies as customers. Our servers have powered customers through over 1,500 power outages since 2018. The imperative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is the defining challenge for our generation. Bloom is committed to product innovation and is engaged in multiple efforts to align Bloom's product roadmap with the zero-emission trajectory. Bloom Energy servers are fuel-flexible, capable to run on natural gas, biogas, and hydrogen.
Bloom is also introducing solid oxide electrolyzer cells that produce renewable hydrogen. Our advances also include the development of fuel cell-powered ships to create a more sustainable marine shipping industry. Bloom Energy is a diverse team of individuals dedicated to bettering the planet through innovation and environmental stewardship and creating sustainable communities now and for future generations. Please welcome Bloom Energy's founder and CEO, KR Sridhar.
The multi-trillion-dollar energy industry is transforming rapidly for the first time since the Industrial Revolution. Bloom Energy is at the forefront of this disruption and well-positioned to be the technology leader. This disruption is being catalyzed by climate change concerns. Global climate change is real and is mainly caused by human activity. Reducing carbon emissions is the number one priority in the fight against climate change and protecting our planet. That means we must accelerate the deployment of renewable storage and hydrogen technologies. But this will be a decades-long transition, and we cannot wait to reduce our carbon footprint. In the interim, it is imperative that we also adapt to climate change by building resiliency. Uninterrupted electricity is essential to our economic vitality and to protecting people and property against hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters. Here is the way I see the future of energy.
In the long term, renewables, solar, and wind will be the primary source of power generation. Inherently, these sources will be intermittent. Renewable hydrogen will be the primary way to store the energy at scale for long durations to firm up the grid. Hydrogen will be transported through pipelines locally and also through tankers and then pipelines to places where renewable power generation is not viable and used for electricity generation, industrial use, and transportation needs. The long-term vision will take decades. Why? While solar and wind have had impressive growth in the last decade, they contribute a mere 1.4% of the total global energy mix in 2019. By 2030, the world energy needs are expected to be about 10% larger than pre-COVID levels. The increased demand alone is 714% of current wind and solar energy capacity. A complete transition to renewables will require trillions of dollars and take decades.
But we can't wait that long. We need to do something now. What we need is climate realism and pragmatism. So what does that transition look like? We need an all-of-the-above strategy to reduce our carbon emissions. A very large reduction of CO2 emissions will come from converting coal and oil-based power plants to natural gas power plants. Natural gas power plants will adopt carbon capture and sequestration technologies to produce zero-emissions power. Zero-carbon hydrogen produced from nuclear power and natural gas with carbon sequestration will become interim options to replace oil and coal in industrial and transportation sectors. While none of us can precisely predict the exact pathways or timelines for the energy transformation, there is one thing for sure: change is happening and will only accelerate going forward. Bloom Energy is ready and is positioned to be a leader in all of these future pathways.
As I see it, this optionality and versatility places us in a unique position in the energy marketplace. I had a mission when I founded Bloom Energy in 2001: to make clean, reliable, and affordable energy available for everyone in the world. To fulfill this mission, we have developed and commercialized a one-of-a-kind platform technology that will enable the future I just described. For a good reason, our platform is architected more like a computer server and data center than a combustion generator or power plant. By going from mainframes to laptops and by switching from landlines to mobile phones, the computer and telecom revolutions created new users for their products and services, provided access and affordability, and greatly expanded market size and brought about digital transformation. Bloom Energy, by replicating this strategy, is enabling the energy transformation. The idea of on-site generation is not new.
Thomas Edison conceived of microgrids and on-site generation in the 1880s. Energy experts have identified solid oxide as the fuel cell technology of choice and the most promising alternative to combustion-based baseload electric power generation. The question then is why solid oxide fuel cells are not already prevalent. For sure, it was not due to lack of interest or effort. Here is the history in a nutshell. The first solid oxide fuel cell patent was filed in 1905. Since the early 1900s, researchers, universities, national labs, and global industrial houses have spent billions of dollars in public and private money without successfully commercializing solid oxide technology for fuel cells or electrolyzers. No commercial product, not one, was delivered through all that time, effort, and spending. That is how complex this technology is.
I'm proud to note that in less than two decades since its founding, the Bloom team has successfully shipped not one, but four generations of commercial solid oxide fuel cell products, and just this month shipped to the field the first of our fifth-generation product. Each generation product is lower in cost, cleaner, and better than the prior generation. Our founding roots are in hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzers, which we built for the space program and the military. Among us co-founders, we have built the very first hydrogen fuel cell that flew on the Gemini spacecraft and Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s, and electrolyzers that made hydrogen and oxygen by splitting water for life support systems and submarines. We also engineered life support systems and electrolyzers for space shuttles, the space station, spacesuits, and the Mars missions.
But when we started at Bloom, we did not commercialize a hydrogen product at first. Instead, we adopted a prudent two-step go-to-market strategy. First, meet the market where it is and establish ourselves using the pervasive natural gas infrastructure in the U.S. Now, in the second phase, we are working to move the market by introducing carbon capture, hydrogen-fueled power generation, hydrogen electrolyzers, etc. We have enabled all this using a flexible platform with a modular design. All variants of this platform are made on the same assembly lines and have mostly the same components. This commonality enables us to leverage past learnings, transfer insights across products, and develop large economies of scale. The most basic building block is a catalyst-coated ceramic substrate called a fuel cell. Multiple cells form a stack. Multiple identical stacks are packaged together with electromechanical support systems to assemble a fuel cell module.
The factory volume manufactures these copy-exact server modules. We may ship a handful of them to a single retail store site or hundreds of them to a multi-megawatt utility substation site, and in the future, to a renewable hydrogen production site. There is a set of deliberate operating principles we use to build momentum in our business. Let me share them with you. First, we obsess about lowering the cost of power production using our server platform. Cost reduction is in our DNA, and our mission statement explicitly calls out for affordability. The key components that make up the cost of power are product, service, install, and fuel costs. Let's look at some of the major factors in product cost reduction. The power output from a server system, roughly the size of a 30-ft container, has gone from 100 kW to 750 kW in five consecutive generations, a 750% increase.
Design simplifications resulted in reduction in system part count in every successive generation, over 70% from the first generation to today. Stack manufacturing direct labor hours has come down by 77% since 2010, and system final assembly costs have come down by 65% in the last five years. These are all of the internal improvements we have made. Our supply chain partners engage with us to make similar improvements. Let me give an example to illustrate this. There are hundreds of fuel cell stacks and thousands of fuel cells in each energy server. Each of the thousands of fuel cells is made using a ceramic powder mix. From one product generation to the next, we increase the fuel cell performance and reduce the material use by reducing the thickness of the fuel cell, leading to a 78% reduction in material used.
We increase the supplier yield and stack yield by a combined 47%, thereby reducing usage. And working with our supply chain partners, we lowered the powder cost by 60%. All this led to powder costs per kilowatt coming down by over 94% in the last 10 years. Hundreds of innovative cost reduction projects, like the powder example, have allowed us to aggressively reduce the cost of our product. Here is a summary: a material cost reduction of 71% in our first-generation product, 50% in the 2 and 2.5 versions, and 55% in Bloom 5.0. All in, from Bloom 1.0 to 5.0, we have an 88% cost reduction, and we will continue to steeply reduce costs as we introduce our new generation products. Now, let's move on to service. Our model has a service contract attached rate of 100% to our product sales.
We receive an annuity revenue payment in return for operating and servicing the product. Nearly 2/3 of the service costs are incurred from replacing fuel cell modules when they reach the end of useful life. The remaining 1/3 is from servicing and maintaining other components and operating the systems. We have reduced the cost of the fuel cell module replacements by increasing the life of the modules fivefold and lowering the cost of the replacement unit by 40%. We have lowered the other service costs by 67% through increased reliability that has resulted in fewer service workers and less frequent service calls for a given size fleet. These improvements allow Bloom servers sold today to command a 20% service margin. The average operating efficiencies of our servers have improved with every new generation product, and today, our servers consume about 20% less fuel than our first-generation product.
With such cost reduction efforts in product, service, and fuel use, Bloom Energy is successfully lowering the cost to produce power. Around 2010, our cost to produce power was over $0.18 per kWh. For a similar situation, today, we can offer $0.09 per kWh . Again, over $0.18 in 2010 to $0.09 now. We remain committed to our goal of being the most economical way for consumers to access clean, reliable, and resilient electricity. Now, to the next key element: create new capabilities. So, over the last two decades, what we developed at Bloom was more than an energy server product. We developed a Bloom solid oxide platform that is versatile, and the five generations of server product are its first manifestations.
The technical knowledge, process know-how, manufacturing expertise, field learning, supply chain development, and service capabilities we have acquired are common to all variants of the platform. We have invested a lot of capital, talent, and time in developing the platform. Now, we are reaping the dividends by expanding into new products. We are currently commercializing five new product offerings using the Bloom platform. They are hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen electrolyzers, biogas fuel cells, marine transport, and carbon capture. The solid oxide fuel cell has inherent advantages in all of these applications. This is why so many governments, universities, and companies invested so much in trying to commercialize a solid oxide product. This, combined with our 10 years of market presence and our culture of continuous innovation and improvement, provides us with a compelling competitive advantage. We offer our customers superior value and service.
Our value proposition includes 24/7 baseload power with very high availability and power quality, and point-of-consumption power generation that offers protection against power outages related to the aging grid, extreme weather, natural disasters, and cyberattacks. We offer clean, low-carbon power with no air pollution using natural gas today and will migrate our customers to zero-carbon power with upgrades for hydrogen, biogas, or carbon capture in the future. Unlike the grid, with its unpredictable and rising costs, we offer our customers the ability to lock in their cost for the long term. Always-on power from Bloom eliminates inventory loss, service interruptions, wage loss, and missed business opportunities. We rapidly deploy power within weeks from an order placement to enable urgent business needs.
We provide total power solution in the form of a microgrid with on-site renewables and storage that can operate without grid power and the ability to relocate our space-efficient servers when businesses move. Our modular, redundant, fault-tolerant architecture eliminates the need for backup systems and eliminates air and noise pollution. Our LEGO-like building block approach allows power capacity to grow in sync with business expansion. Our aggressive cost reductions, superior value, and our service enable growth in our current markets. Growth in current markets, along with new product introductions and expansions into new markets, will drive revenue growth. More on that a little bit later from our CMO, Sharelynn Moore. The economies of scale create a big opportunity for Bloom to both increase profits and improve margins. You will hear more about this from our Chief Financial Officer, Greg Cameron. We invest in R&D to maintain our market leadership.
We protect our intellectual property with over 350 patents and thousands of trade secrets. There are reasons why complex systems such as commercial aircraft engines cannot be copied like simple electronic gadgets. While it's relatively easy to disassemble and re-engineer simple systems, you cannot divine how to create a complex Bloom Energy Server by getting your hands on a system. It takes decades of actual learning to acquire the trade secrets and process maturity needed to build and improve a product. Nevertheless, we are paranoid and run fast. That has enabled us to be first in the market, and it'll enable us to continue to stay ahead of the curve. We invest in talent.
We recruit and retain a diverse and talented workforce and leadership team by providing an engaging, inspiring, inclusive, and respectful workplace and a culture that is mission-oriented and prides itself on caring and doing the right thing. When I look at the market need, the size of the market, the need for new solutions, and the shifting public sentiment on climate, it is clear that the time for our energy solution is now. Inside Bloom Energy, we are very palpably gaining momentum. Our business is maturing, and we are financially stronger. Rapid reductions in our product and service costs are making us competitive in more places. In contrast, the grid is failing more frequently, and utility prices are rising. Resiliency is more important than ever before, and we have an unparalleled offering of always-on power.
Based on our competitive price points and high availability, Bloom is poised to enjoy significant revenue growth and high margins. Our new offerings in hydrogen, marine transport, and carbon capture offer compelling value to our customers and position us to play a central role in the energy transformation that's being demanded by consumers, policymakers, regulators, and investors alike. We are in the right place at the right time. The strength of our current core business, combined with our new product offerings, makes Bloom Energy a reliable and valuable growth company. Our future is very bright.
Equinix has been a leader in data center innovation and global sustainability throughout its 20-year history. We have a long-term goal of using 100% clean and renewable energy across our global platform of more than 200 data centers.
In 2015, we collaborated with Bloom Energy to install a 1 MW fuel cell at our SV5 data center. We initially chose Bloom because they were uniquely situated to provide large-scale, reliable on-site technology that is able to adapt as we continue to pursue our resilience and clean energy goals. In August 2017, we expanded our partnership and signed an agreement to install Bloom fuel cells at 12 IBXs throughout the United States. That 15-year project set out to provide a total capacity of more than 37 MW of power with a phased installation that began in late 2017 and completed it through 2019. Over the lifetime of the project, we estimate that we will avoid 660,000 tons of carbon emissions and save 87 billion gallons of water that would have been consumed by natural gas or coal-fired utility generation.
We have subsequently contracted for another 12 MW that further deepens our partnership and takes us a step closer to our goal of reducing or eliminating the need for backup diesel generation. Controlling our ability to generate enough reliable power for our business is critical as we continue to globally scale our operations. We've made significant progress on our sustainability goals, and the Bloom team has been excellent to work with. We look forward to continuing and growing our strong partnership with Bloom in the future.
Hello. I'm Greg Cameron, CFO of Bloom Energy, and thanks, KR. And I think all of us who joined Bloom Energy in the past year recognize and appreciate the flywheel effect and its reflection in the vision that you had for Bloom, where we are today and where we're headed.
My excitement about the opportunities at Bloom are even greater now than when I joined the company. One of the key lessons in the flywheel effect is that companies that remain focused on execution have the ability to get the flywheel moving faster with the same amount of effort, while those companies who lose focus will lose momentum and have a hard time keeping the flywheel going. As we look ahead with Bloom Energy, we have a simplified balance sheet and are even more focused on execution, which we know will drive growth. Today, I'm going to share with you the financial model that we've developed, which we believe will get the flywheel moving faster and more efficiently, generating strong returns for our investors. With that, let me take you through my presentation. This is based on important feedback that we've received from our investors and analysts.
Our goal coming out of the investor day is to emphasize several key points and ultimately answer the question, why invest in Bloom? I want to offer several key things that we are focused on: highlight our growth story, help you understand our capital allocation strategy and the financial metrics you should use to measure our performance and success, underscore our strategy and our market opportunities that we have in front of us, introduce and highlight the depth and talent in our organization, and finally, garner your support for believing in our story and investing in our company. I'm going to start my presentation with a brief overview of our performance to date. Even in a challenging COVID environment, we've accomplished a great deal this year.
I had a few priorities as I joined the company in April, but there were two immediate areas requiring action to de-risk and protect our company. First, we had to strengthen our balance sheet. Second, we had to preserve our liquidity while we evaluated the impacts from COVID. In March, we had completed a short-term solution for our convertible notes, but we were left with almost all of our $443 million in recourse debt with a 10% coupon, of which $357 million was maturing inside year-end 2021. We were also concerned about our ability to complete installations for our U.S.-based customers. While we knew acceptances would eventually be completed, we were dependent upon our contractors, utility partners, and inspectors. Timing would be the issue. We had a plan to ramp server production in the back half of the year, but that would require a significant investment in working capital.
Based on these risks and the capital needs, we postponed the ramp. We focused on install contingencies and solutions for our balance sheet. As we worked into the summer, we became more comfortable with our progress, and in July, we authorized an increase to our production output. In August, we issued $230 million in green bonds and began to call the outstanding convertible debt and the majority of our secured notes, ultimately resulting in a reduction in $143 million in recourse debt and $44 million in annual debt service. We have been encouraged by our install performance in the summer, but as we close the third quarter, we were impacted by extreme weather in the northeast. These installs have now been completed, but they reduced our third-quarter revenue. Going forward, we've adjusted our operating expectations for late-quarter U.S.-based installations.
Through our continued cost reduction efforts, we've made significant improvement in our profitability metrics. Our non-GAAP gross margins are up from 16.2% in the first quarter to an average of 21.3% for the year, up two points versus 2019. Non-GAAP operating income has improved over the year, posting a positive result in 3Q and improved 24% versus last year. And we've seen additional improvement in our EPS. As we move through the fourth quarter, we've gained momentum across many aspects of our business, and we're focused on a strong finish in December. Now that we've addressed our immediate concerns, we are well-positioned for growth and investing in the future. With that, let me talk to you about the evolution of our business. As Bloom has matured as a public company, it's become a stronger, more resilient business.
Since our IPO, the company today has a much greater diversification in our revenue, with less reliance on a few high-profile customers. We've defined customer here as the end buyer of the power, looking through the financing vehicle. Within the U.S., we've increased the number of customers, and the size of each installation has also increased. Today, almost 40% of our installed deals are greater than 1 MW , and with a greater number of customers, this makes us less reliant on the individual customer opportunity to deliver growth. Also, by delivering on larger installs, it accelerates the scale, which we can grow our business. We've been very encouraged by our growth in our business in South Korea. It speaks to the strength of our partner and our partnership with SK E&C. It's been a primary driver of our international growth and diversification of our revenue.
Going forward, a key component to our growth will not only be to continue the momentum in South Korea, but add additional geographies. As we look forward to next year, we expect to demonstrate strong top-line growth while continuing to improve our profitability metrics. We're targeting 25% revenue growth in 2021. To provide this revenue, we have nearly 100% of our U.S. projects identified from backlog and have targeted dates for installation. Internationally, we expect to maintain the momentum we've captured in South Korea with a robust pipeline and backlog. On the third quarter's earnings call, we discussed that we were investing in additional capacity. We expect to be able to produce all the servers in our current 200-MW footprint to support these revenue projections.
While we grow revenue, we expect to improve our non-GAAP gross margins another two to three points as we maintain our strong product margins and improve our performance in installation and service. Off these strengthening gross margins, we will invest an additional $25 million-$35 million in our technology, marketing, and sales teams to support future growth. Even with this increase in expense, we expect to achieve positive non-GAAP operating income for the year. We are continuing our journey to become operating cash flow positive. For 2020, we expect to be cash use. I would expect that for next year, we will close the majority of that usage gap driven by our strong top line, partially offset by our investments and growth. In that estimate, I have not allocated for a significant increase in our safe harbor working capital.
If ITC is not extended or increased, we would likely build additional inventory to support benefits for our customers on current projects. While we would have been close to a cash flow from operations positive next year, we now expect to be positive the following year. I want to be clear that this is based on sound financial analysis, and our desire to invest to grow our business is based on significant opportunities in front of us, which Sharelynn and others in the management team will discuss in a little bit. But let me highlight what we believe are our keys to our long-term success. We've got to continue to drive down the cost curve for our product, simplify our business model so that we can scale our operations with growth, leverage the platform in new applications.
As KR talked about, the Bloom Server is a platform that can be optimized for several purposes with minimal R&D or manufacturing investment. Ultimately, we believe this delivers long-term growth at very attractive returns. Now I'll walk you through some of the numbers and the drivers. We continue to make significant progress on reducing our product costs through our efforts in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. Soon, we'll be benefiting from the increased power density of Bloom 7.5. At Bloom, we take great pride in our process rigor that has consistently reduced our costs 12%-15% per year. Whether it's working with outside suppliers or across the company, our operations team brings a toolset and a confidence to deliver the production and the cost down.
Rather than have me talk about their great work, I'd like to introduce the Bloom leader for our operations and supply chain teams, our Chief Operations Officer, Susan Brennan.
Thank you, Greg, and thank you all for joining us today. My name is Susan Brennan, and I'm the Chief Operations Officer for Bloom Energy. I bring over 30 years of manufacturing experience. The Bloom Solution is attracting strong interest from several new markets with varying requirements. In response, we have a working model that allows us to add capacity with flexibility without extending lead times and with minimal investment. As I noted at the outset, I brought over three decades of experience to Bloom when I joined and have applied the carry-over/carry-across model to Bloom.
This means that we work to build on today's successes, don't spend on redesigning anything that already works, and only look backward to build on the foundation that has already been laid. From a customer's perspective, this allows us to increase the speed of our installation, increase our power density, drive a lower cost of product, and minimize disruption and tooling costs at the supply base and in our Bloom footprint. Currently, the majority of our time and investment is on the fifth generation of our technology, Bloom 7.5 or Kiloco. Speaking to the carry-over/carry-across model, we did not fully redesign this product. In fact, 52% of parts are common between the two technologies, so almost half of the parts are carried over from 5.0 to 7.5. There is 70% overlap between hydrogen and Kiloco as designed today and 80% overlap between electrolyzer, SOEC, and Kiloco as designed today.
We are focusing our investments into changing the interconnect and the electrolyte, areas that drive value for the customer. In terms of cost, since launch, Bloom 5.0 costs are down 55%. If you add the benefit of the carryover savings to the Bloom Energy competency for working internally and with our supply base to reduce cost, the future cost model is very competitive. The second strategy I want to highlight is how we're using our available capacity in more creative and innovative ways to alleviate pressures within the system and drive future growth. We are optimizing operations as we expand beyond California and have made strategic investments in our Delaware facility, expanding our presence on both coasts. Our team uses business metrics to determine the scale balance between our plants and our supply partners, putting Bloom in the front of manufacturing efficiency and cost optimization across our supply chain.
Our third strategy is to drive ideation from technicians who work with our product day in and day out. Our technicians receive consistent training, including lean manufacturing, and have built extensive working knowledge of the product. Think the 10,000-hour working model, which enables them to bring the best ideas to the table. Our overall cost story is a culmination of optimizing capacity and capital investment, working with R&D and optimizing the design so we only put resources into the items that will bring value to the customer, and finally, benefiting from the ideas that are driven by our highly trained technicians on our production floor. At Bloom, we pride ourselves on delivering reliable, cost-effective, innovative, and sustainable technology to all our customers. And we look forward to keeping you up to date on our progress. Thank you for listening.
Thank you, Susan.
Very compelling, and it demonstrates the strength of our company. While we don't solely position our product against the cost of electricity, it's obviously a critical data point for our customers in the decision to purchase. When purchased through a standard 15-year PPA in 2017, our initial cost of delivered electricity for our customers would have been around $0.14 per kWh. At the time, to effectively sell the Bloom Server, we focused on higher electricity cost regions to make the offer more compelling for our customers. We knew that as we continued to take the cost down, it would open additional regions. Today, we're positioning our product to be cost-effective versus a delivered cost of electricity of $0.09 per kWh. Given our sales and installation cycle times, this is a combination of both achieved and planned cost reductions and the benefit of resiliency.
As mentioned, Sharelynn will speak more about the go-to-market strategies, but I'm confident that we offer a compelling value in many more regions in the U.S., as well as internationally. As we grow our business, we need to continue to simplify if we are to effectively scale. A key component of our strategy will be leveraging partnerships. We value our partnership with SK in supporting our product in South Korea and see opportunities to continue to expand the relationship. We also know it will be critical to find similar partners for us to efficiently grow in additional geographies. Strong partners provide the support to access the market by advocating for our technology, supporting commercial operations, and providing local EPC and financing capability. The best partnerships are the ones like SK that provide opportunities to work jointly on technical advances.
In the U.S., we have strong relationships with our financing partners, many of which are large-scale utilities. Together, we can look for joint commercial opportunities or commercial deployments to work together on. Within our installation process, we leverage several providers. We believe that we can further simplify by leveraging EPC providers. We're investigating a few new partners, educating them on our fuel cell, and evaluating their capability. We are hopeful to engage in a few pilot projects in the near future to accelerate our learnings. We continue to simplify our operating processes to drive performance and profitability. There's an opportunity to leverage lean principles in our sales operations to reduce cycle time and increase effectiveness. In service, the team's reducing costs and increasing fleet optimization to drive towards profitability. We've made progress on our non-GAAP gross margins throughout 2020.
Over the next few years, we expect these increases through improvements in our service platform and installation. On service, we've made tremendous progress on cost and fleet optimization. We believe that we're very close to having a profitable service platform by 2022 that Glenn will speak about during the panel. On installation, the skid solution and working with partners will improve our financial results. While we do not expect to make a profit on install, we can reduce the dilution both by eliminating the losses and having partners perform the work and earning the revenue. As we improve our gross margins, we expect operating leverage to improve our non-GAAP operating margin 17 points from this year to 2025. Next year, we will increase our investment and growth for technology, sales, and marketing and remain above our combined 15% as a percentage of revenue target highlighted on the slide.
Going forward, we expect to have sequential improvement each year as we approach our 15% target on non-GAAP operating margins. As we think about potential top-line growth for Bloom, I want to revisit our large and growing addressable market. The product cost downs drive an expansion within the large U.S. C&I market. Internationally, we plan to replicate our model in South Korea by securing additional partnerships that can support market access. With the addition of my former GE colleague, Azeez Mohammed, we have expanded the leadership to cultivate and secure new markets. We are hopeful that within his first year, he will find at least one new partner. We presented our hydrogen strategy a couple of weeks ago. Given the strength of the platform, we have the products that have the technical advantages and are commercially viable.
Soon, we expect to announce additional wins and are committed to building a valuable franchise in the expanding hydrogen economy. We've discussed our progress with marine and Samsung Heavy Industries. Our fuel cell technology is well-positioned with biogas. We have tremendous opportunity for our carbon capture technology, especially for large utility or industrial-scale applications. These near and mid-term opportunities give us tremendous confidence that we have space in which to grow our business. Beyond operationalizing the technical requirements, we will need to invest in the brand and product management capability to support our multi-application company. These skill sets, along with origination channels, will be key in meeting our growth and our growth expectations, and I'm excited to have Sharelynn share our plans. As we look forward, we see an opportunity to continue to grow our base solid oxide fuel cell revenue.
In addition to the base, there are some applications that can enable additional growth. It's mostly a question of timing on biogas, marine, and carbon capture. Sharelynn will provide more detail on commercialization, but as these products come into market, they will facilitate additional sales of our fuel cells and will provide a lift to our growth rates. As we discussed during the hydrogen presentation a few weeks back, we believe even a modest penetration in the available TAM for electrolyzers and fuel cells should provide significant revenue growth. These applications within the hydrogen economy should give us the opportunities to take our revenue growth towards 30% as we approach 2025. As these levels of projected growth, we've been planning to ensure that we have enough manufacturing capacity. On the third quarter earnings call, we shared we would be investing to effectively double our manufacturing capacity to 400 MW.
With this level of growth, we will likely need to be making decisions to invest in additional capacity by the end of 2021. It's important to remember that the investment required for each 200-MW line is about $100 million, and it takes about eight months to bring fully online. At full capacity, it takes less than eight months to achieve cash payback. Here's how I see the whole thing coming together. This is based on real data, fundamental analysis, and our simplified approach in sound execution. Revenue, we expect to grow around 25%-30% per year. Non-GAAP gross margins, we expect to improve one to two points a year towards 30%. In non-GAAP operating margins, we expect to expand towards 15% as we get the operating leverage from our business. We think this is an attractive financial equation, and we have the technology and the team to achieve.
As I close and before turning it over to Sharelynn, I believe that beyond our financial metrics, we have several milestones that we need to achieve next year. We have to operationalize the manufacturing of Bloom 7.5. We reached a significant milestone this month as we ship our first unit to a customer site. Next year will be about creating the manufacturing capacity for that product. We need to find our next country for expansion. We will deliver our first electrolyzer and hydrogen fuel cell for field demonstration. We shipped our first 100-kW hydrogen fuel cell to our partner SK this month. We've talked about investing in growth to build sales and marketing capability while we reduce our product cost. In summary, our growth plan is built on a sound financial model based on several key facts. We have a flexible technology platform that can be used across multiple applications.
Our revenues are growing to large markets. We are reducing our product costs and improving our margins as we move towards being cash flow positive. Our balance sheet is significantly stronger, and we have the ability to fund our investments in technology to capitalize on new opportunities and achieve the kind of meaningful growth that investors in today's markets want and deserve.
Hello, all our investors. This is SK E&C CEO, Jae-hyun Ahn . Before we start, I would like to say that it's my great honor to share our business status working with Bloom Energy at this bright Investors Day. In November 2018, we signed a partnership agreement for SK E&C to distribute Bloom's technology to the Korean market. Since then, we have agreed to receive more than 120 MW from Bloom, worth over $1 billion in equipment and future service revenue.
We further strengthened our partnership in September 2019 under a joint venture agreement to bring local assembly of Bloom's solid oxide fuel cells to Korea. This joint venture will definitely carry out and meet up with Korea's ambitious hydrogen economy goals, aiming for 15,000 MW of stationary fuel cells by 2040. We have sincere belief that we can use Bloom Energy's technology as a springboard for potential expansion into other Asian Pacific markets. Our partnership with Bloom Energy is well-positioned and prepared for growing demand for hydrogen. Based on our strong relationship, we are capable of deploying more than 400 MW per year within the next decade. With no doubt, Bloom Energy is the only leading provider of large-scale and reliable technology in this hydrogen industry that is willing to be adapted as we continue to innovate our hydrogen capabilities. They are certainly a step above the rest.
We look forward to growing our strong partnership with Bloom Energy in the future.
Hello, I'm Sharelynn Moore, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. Similar to Greg, I could not be more excited about the opportunity to continue to advance KR's vision. I knew when joining Bloom Energy in August of this year, I was joining a company that is positioned to play a pivotal role in the global energy transition, the largest transformation since Edison invented the electricity grid and the greatest imperative that is facing our planet. The transition is not only going to fundamentally change the landscape of the energy industry, but value is going to shift to companies that help customers wisely chart a path to affordable, resilient, and zero-carbon energy. For these reasons, we are excited about what lies ahead for us, and I think you'll understand why as we complete our overviews today.
We have a mission and clear priorities, and we are laser-focused on execution. It is clear how our flywheel will continue to gain speed and momentum given all the great work we have underway. You've heard our vision from KR and our business plan from Greg. Building on top of that, I want to paint a more vivid picture of the market and our strategy by discussing how we will improve upon our core-based business and start driving results on our new business growth levers and market introductions. As you may well know, there are two very powerful macro forces that directly impact our business. First, there's climate risk: wildfires in the west, hurricanes in the southeast, and winter storms across the United States. These climate events are increasingly frequent and intense, and they threaten business continuity in health and safety.
Therefore, we have seen the demand for resiliency on the rise. We can envision energy security becoming as top of mind as cybersecurity for board-level risk mitigation. Second, there's a push for decarbonization. Industries and municipalities around the world are increasingly focused on meeting international and domestic climate goals, some of which will go into effect in less than 10 years. Along these lines, utilities are also looking to implement new technology to drive distributed generation or decentralization along with decarbonization. If you think about Bloom as the platform that plays across the entire energy landscape, doubling volume isn't a difficult goal to achieve. Today, Bloom already provides the world's most efficient, commercially available, reliable distributed energy solution, and with our long history in this industry, our flexibility, and our innovative core technology, Bloom can deliver the resiliency needed today and also provide a pathway toward decarbonization.
All this to say, we will play a major role in energy transformation. We can take advantage of electricity production in a modular, fuel-flexible way. We can provide carbon capture from natural gas. We can produce the colors of the hydrogen rainbow with our electrolyzers. We can deploy in marine and maybe even other forms of heavy-duty transportation. And we can do all of this at scale with the same core solid oxide platform. In my presentation today, I'll discuss expansions and strengthening of our core energy server business and overview new applications, which include hydrogen, biogas, carbon capture, and marine, and how all of this will culminate in an opportunity to take these strengths and opportunities into more international markets. First, I'll tell you about the base business. By the end of Q3, we had installed 500 MW of systems with our core fuel cells.
Over the next two to three years, we will drive increased growth through a variety of levers. One, cost reductions opening new states and markets. Two, focus on resiliency, what will drive additional value over just cost of energy. And three, providing a path and migration to sustainability and zero carbon. We make all of this happen by strengthening our go-to-market efforts. In the U.S., our cost reductions and focus on resiliency is unlocking new markets. We're expanding into more states in the U.S. We had been focused on roughly five states and are now expanding into 28. For instance, we are going to target the Great Lakes region for the first time. As you can see, we'll be covering most of the U.S. by 2025, opening up a $200 billion TAM.
We can do this because not only is our cost structure increasingly competitive, but resiliency drives an additional $15-$30 a MWh premium. Our Bloom Energy servers are the most resilient, flexible, modular, and cost-effective way to provide a complete resilient microgrid. We have the flexibility to interconnect to the grid and run grid parallel or completely run a customer's load grid-free, free bird, as we say. In fact, we've modeled every scenario, and there is no better or cheaper way to provide a power-only microgrid than using Bloom to provide primary power. Another key element in this market is our ability to be fuel-flexible and provide a migration path to sustainability and carbon neutrality. A typical first maintenance cycle is roughly five or six years, and that could be the ideal time to transition to hydrogen, for instance.
The beauty of our platform is that the fuel cell used in our fuel cell is upgradable in the field. So we are fuel-flexible today and fuel-migratable tomorrow. Let me turn to South Korea. South Korea is less of a growth story and more of a strengthening market maturity story. We last publicly announced 120 MW installed. To date, we've installed more than 150 MW, and the number keeps growing. Our go-to-market strategy leverages a resource-light and partner-led model. What's great about this approach is that it enables us to broadly cover the market with relatively few resources, and what makes it work is our large, sophisticated, and trusted partners with boots on the ground and deep local ties. Our partner, SK Group, acts as our product advocate, operations support, and installation team.
Over the next few years, we see opportunity to execute against our strong track record in South Korea to continue to deliver our current and next-generation fuel-flexible server solutions. Korea is very focused on leading the world in hydrogen and leading the charge in the hydrogen economy. We are very well-positioned to take advantage of this. You've seen we recently won our first hydrogen project. We are shipping 100% hydrogen-powered fuel cells this month and electrolyzers next year. We anticipate developing a 400-MW-a-year bookings business in Korea as we transition into hydrogen over the next few years. So, to sum up our core business, we see an additional opportunity in the near term across new zones and segments in the U.S. and additional expansion in Korea. Importantly, we have worked to align our sales and marketing organization to go after these opportunities in a more disciplined and deliberate manner.
The changes we are implementing include a more sophisticated go-to-market approach with a more focused sales organization on areas of growth and larger deals. For instance, we have transitioned from a single generalist sales organization to a focused sales team, including a national whales or large-deal team and a utility-focused team, as well as a regional segment hybrid team focused on the mid-market. We've done the work to segment and size the market opportunities so we know where to focus and pluck the ripest fruit. We have cultivated a very highly influential energy advisor network of partners. These partners bring us highly qualified leads, increasing our pipeline. We've signed more than 25 of these advisors across key verticals since starting the program this year, resulting in hundreds of high-quality engagements bearing fruit today.
Another benefit is these advisors bring us in at the right time in the sales process, which shortens our sales cycle. We've seen our sales cycle shrink to nine months from a traditional 18-month model. In the marketing side, we recognize that to penetrate the resiliency and sustainability markets, it's a value sell and requires a CXO conversation. So we're investing in aggressive branding and thought leadership. Too many people in energy circles don't know who Bloom is. We will fix that. The key point is that we are investing to activate our strategy, and it's baked into the plan that Greg outlined. Now, let me turn to carbon capture. This is a capability we've had on the shelf for quite some time, but the need for the solution has suddenly become more timely and relevant than ever.
As you know, carbon capture creates a pathway to carbon-neutral and carbon-negative flexible power and hydrogen. Our process is actually quite simple. We've created an add-on carbon separation module to add to our standard energy server, essentially allowing us to separate the CO2 normally exhausted within the unit and instead separates out a pure CO2 stream. This creates a high-purity hydrogen stream as well. So we can either sequester the CO2 or reuse it, think dry ice. And we can do the same thing with hydrogen. Use it to recycle back into the fuel cell for efficiency or sell the hydrogen. It's a pretty simple virtuous cycle of reuse and repurposing fuels for maximum efficiency. Natural gas or biogas goes in, CO2 and hydrogen is separated out, and electricity is generated, resulting in carbon-free or negative carbon power.
The end result is a flexible platform that enables a diverse set of solutions for decarbonization at the lowest possible cost without having to compromise on resiliency. What this means is that Bloom is actually able to provide low-cost, resilient electricity using available on-site natural gas that is also carbon-free. Also, super important, we've tested this and it works. We can separate 99% pure CO2. Now, let's turn to biogas. Our solid oxide fuel cell can run biogas as the fuel, providing zero-carbon power. The United States currently has 2,200 biogas plants operational, representing only 15% of the eligible market. The American Biogas Council estimates 103 trillion kWh of electricity each year of potential, resulting in $45 billion in capital deployment and the creation of 25,000 permanent new jobs. Biogas is going to be a big deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Right now, our focus is mainly on the California market, with dairy being the most significant and active opportunity driven by the state's Air Resources Board's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, or LCFS, and the added benefit of Bloom's co-located installation is to power the dairy and the operation it resides in, in addition to using the biogas. This is a $1 billion opportunity alone. We've already done beta testing and have a deal announced. Our first project is under construction with CalBio. Looking beyond dairy, we also see opportunities with wastewater treatment plants and landfills as we continue to navigate the regulatory environment. Today, the requirement for wastewater treatment and landfills is to flare waste gases. Bloom can be a smarter alternative. We can use these gases and eliminate NOx, SOx, and particulates that flaring emits.
This opens up potentially more near-term opportunities that may accelerate our focus on wastewater and landfills. Longer term, we think the biogas business will track closely to our U.S. commercial and industrial business, leveraging our scale and efficient cost structure. So the takeaway on biogas and carbon capture is that these are tangible opportunities that Bloom is making a reality today. We see this as an augmentation and enabler to our growing base business. With that said, now let's talk about the hydrogen economy. As you're well aware, the hydrogen market is fast growing, and at Bloom, our scale has made us more efficient. We have a unique platform with four key advantages: efficiency, flexibility, cost, and scale. Our strategy is to leverage our same flexible energy server platform, supply chain, manufacturing process, partners, and monitoring infrastructure to transform our solid oxide fuel cells into electrolyzers.
A solid oxide electrolyzer is up to 31% more efficient than any other electrolyzer chemistry. In addition to the efficiency advantage, we have a path to an electrolyzer cost of less than $600 a kilowatt. All of this makes us better than any other technology from both a cost and performance perspective and positions us for growth. As we previously announced, our partnership with SK puts us on track to use hydrogen to create electricity on-site in Korea next year. We've actually shipped our first 100% hydrogen fuel cell this month, and additionally, we have full programs in place where we will be providing electrolyzers and producing hydrogen on-site using renewable energy to produce green hydrogen in 2022. For reference, we gave a teach-in on hydrogen last month where we went into additional detail. Materials are still available on our investor site.
As Greg has said, we have a 1 GW and $750 million opportunity in this business alone by 2025. We're well on our way. Turning to marine, we've talked about this as our dedicated investor call, so I won't spend as much time here. But once again, our fuel-flexible platform is key to our go-to-market strategy. We know the International Maritime Organization regulations on air pollutants and energy efficiency are pushing for a reduction in annual CO2 emissions by 2030. And our current fuel cell platform meets those emission requirements as well as the 2050 targets. Our solution has the potential to offer a practical and rapid decarbonization pathway. This will ensure ship owners will not face the risk of stranded assets. Additionally, the fuel cells can be upgraded to hydrogen power when the ship has the ability to have hydrogen power on board.
You may recall the partnership we announced with Samsung Heavy Industries earlier this year, which has us slated to engage in development through 2023. As we strengthen our core business and expand into new energy applications, the final key element of our growth is expanding into new international markets. With the International Business Development Team under the leadership of Azeez, we are actively working to add new geographies where we replicate our success in the U.S. and Korea. So it is my pleasure that I introduce my partner, Azeez Mohammed.
Thanks for the introduction, Sharelynn. Hi, everyone. Nice meeting you. Recently, I've been appointed as the Executive Vice President for International Business Development here at Bloom. I've been here almost a month now, and I'm very excited to be a part of this great team. Bloom was the perfect choice for me for three reasons.
First and foremost, Bloom has built a solid management team and a very strong board, and I'm very honored to be working closely with them. Secondly, Bloom offers a complete set of product and solution which enables the transition towards a decarbonized energy future, and it does this in a manner without threatening the current infrastructure. It, in fact, offers a safe passage. Now, specifically speaking, it starts with the use of natural gas and biogas in electricity generation, leading up to the production and use of hydrogen from renewable sources, and lastly, I just feel that the timing is absolutely right. If you look at the intensity of the discussions around the decarbonization, Bloom is just set to capitalize on these trends well. This, coupled with the desire to grow internationally, gives us the optionality and leverages to achieve the growth that we need.
Just to sum things up, I'd say that my experiences fit the Bloom's mission and the task at hand perfectly. And I'm very excited to be here. I'm excited about the possibilities, and I look forward to interacting with you with more results in the future. Thank you for your time.
Putting this all together, we will bring in more revenue and further unlock economic opportunities. Here are some milestones that we are tracking, which provides a roadmap to our growth strategy. Considering these macroeconomic tailwinds, we believe the environment is right today to execute on our strategy, and we clearly have the flexibility and optionality to apply our technology to a variety of uses.
So if markets move faster or slower than expected, or if the mix isn't exactly right, our portfolio of energy solutions and markets are diverse enough to take advantage of any market opportunity that presents itself. Our company's preparedness and flexibility and scale will allow us to take advantage of these markets and not miss an opportunity. We will continue to scale up, bring costs down, and expand our set of applications and geographies as the flywheel is in motion. Thank you.
We will always have the need for about 110 GWh of electricity every year. We have 2 MW of Bloom right now, and that has been here for about five years on the campus. It runs 24/7. 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. Bloom Energy electricity is also integrated with our solar on the campus. We have about 1.3 MW 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. We put a lot of effort into reducing the overall energy load, adding photovoltaics or 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.
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. We have just signed another PPA with Bloom to add another megawatt of Bloom Energy servers to the campus grid. The more time we can have, the more reliance and resiliency in our power system, the better we're going to be.
In policy and politics, timing can be everything. At Bloom Energy, we believe the federal landscape shows considerable promise in 2021 and 2022 for bipartisan solutions for clean energy and climate. My name's Carl Guardino, and I'm honored to serve as Executive Vice President for Global Government Affairs and Policy. I joined the Bloom team after serving for 24 years as CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group because I'm inspired by our visionary founder and CEO, KR
Sridhar's mission for our company to ensure we have clean, reliable energy that is affordable for everyone in the world. At a time when wildfires, heat waves, hurricanes, rolling blackouts, and grid instability events are growing both in intensity and in duration, that mission is not only inspiring. It is essential. That is why Bloom Energy is stepping up our work in Washington, D.C., in the new year with a laser-like focus in four product areas with four matching policy solutions. First, our energy server. The policy solution is the extension of the investment tax credit. The ITC has historically been a 30% investment tax credit for clean energy technologies, including fuel cells, which has been one of the most impactful federal policies to drive investment in clean energy. We believe the climate is right in D.C.
because President-elect Biden has made climate one of his four strategic priorities, and the ITC has historically been a place of bipartisan agreement to address our needs for clean energy and climate solutions. Second, our hydrogen energy server. The longer-term extension of the ITC also helps us scale production of our energy server to design to run on pure hydrogen, as the ITC applies to fuel cells regardless of feedstock. Third, our energy server with carbon capture, utilization, and storage. The policy vehicle is the 45Q extension and expansion. This is an existing tax credit that applies per ton of CO2 that is either utilized or stored. As Bloom looks to develop our product offering enabled for carbon capture, the 45Q incentive helps open up this market to better serve our customers and our country. Both President-elect Biden and House Republicans have signaled strong support.
Biden has called for expanding the 45Q credit for carbon capture, and House Republicans have proposed making the credit permanent. Fourth, our solid oxide electrolyzer cell. The policy vehicle is the production tax credit extension. We are seeing unprecedented interest in clean hydrogen across all levels of government. At the federal level, we see two policies as particularly important. First, the extension of the wind production tax credit, which will continue to drive down renewable energy prices, which is a precondition for enabling the clean hydrogen market. Second, with the European Union and several Asian countries making significant investments in hydrogen, we believe there is strong interest in D.C. to do likewise. We believe the climate is right in D.C. because leading the world in clean hydrogen production will be important to the United States for our economic competitiveness.
The Biden administration recognizes this and has specifically called out clean hydrogen in their climate proposals. At Bloom Energy, we will continue to build a bridge between our nation's capital and the innovation capital to further ensure clean, resilient, and reliable energy for our communities, our country, and our planet. It is now my pleasure to facilitate a dialogue with three of our top Bloom Energy executives on the timely topic of scaling the business and unlocking the power of Bloom technology. Our panelists are as follows: Venkat Venkataraman, PhD, Executive Vice President of Energy and Chief Technology Officer; Glenn Griffiths, Executive Vice President, Services, Quality, Reliability, and EH&S; and Sonja Wilkerson, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer. Venkat, I'd like to start with you. As Bloom's Chief Technology Officer, you have been foundational in creating its technology.
From its earliest iteration to now, can you talk about the innovative technologies that your team has created to date?
Innovation is the key to Bloom's success. We at Bloom, over the years, have known how to make the vision a reality. In terms of the technical advancements we did over the years, I will put them into two broad categories. One is related to the solid oxide fuel cell technology. That's our core to our business. The second one is related to flexibility and adaptability to the ecosystem around us. This involves, as you mentioned in your prelude, governments, customers, and also other forcing functions. In terms of our core solid oxide fuel cell technology, we have gone through five generations of product. To this date, we have 268 patents that are already issued in the U.S., and we have 128 patents issued in foreign countries.
We also have another 125 patents pending approval. This kind of tells you, on the innovation side, how we have improved the system over time. Also, I have to point out that our system is modular. This helps a lot in terms of manufacturing and scalability. Furthermore, if you look at the history, we have consistently improved the system performance, increasing the electrical efficiency and also reducing costs. In terms of flexibility and adaptability, we did not build Bloom systems as just a product. We built it as a platform. This enables us to do many vertical integrations, grid parallel applications, mission-critical applications, and above all, integrating other DERs, which are distributed energy resources, with our system. The platform is the key to microgrid offering too.
Venkat, thank you. Taking a step back for a second, Bloom's journey has certainly been an interesting one.
I think the big question this audience would like to know is, why the confidence now? Glenn, I'd like to hear your thoughts first.
Thank you, Carl. At Bloom, we know more about how to build, design, operate, and service fuel cells more than anyone else in the world. And so let's just look at some facts. Fact: we have built over 47 million individual fuel cells, and our factories are at full capacity, and we're growing faster than ever. Fact: we have over 431 million operating hours of our fuel cells in the field. In addition, we delivered over 15,200 GWh of power to our customers. This is the equivalent of powering Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island combined for a whole year. Fact: By the end of next year, we will have over 700 MW of power at 700-plus unique sites worldwide. That's more than anyone else in the world.
Fact: our first commercial installation that's just surpassed two years' anniversary is operating at 100% availability. We've had all of the fuel cells there, and not a single one has required replacement. This is an outstanding achievement, and I challenge anybody else in the world to be able to deliver this level of performance. And you pull that together, and you combine that with the fact that we are just on the verge of profitability in services, and as we speak, we're shipping the first of our next-generation servers. This means I'm not just confident about the future. I'm actually excited, Carl.
Glenn, thank you. Venkat, what's your take?
One point I would like to make here clearly is bringing a new technology is not a linear development. So it has gone through significant challenges over time. It's a roller coaster ride.
Over the 15-plus years of deployment onto the field and the five generations of product, we certainly have the product very robust. And furthermore, we are actually thrilled to introduce the next generation of product of Bloom 7.5, which also paves the way for the future. So overall, we are in great shape.
Venkat, thank you. We've spent our first few minutes focused on the technology, but I want to switch gears to another critical area: our people, and bring in Sonja Wilkerson. Sonja, the executive team has been transformed recently. Can you talk to us about the key priorities on which you focused undergoing this transformation?
If you review the profiles of each of these executives that's recently joined Bloom, you'll see three common experiences of each of them. One, the executives that have joined bring tremendous scale to Bloom.
Two, they come from complex environments where change is absolutely critical to drive and accelerate, resulting in the success of the businesses. And three, they have deep expertise in their functional areas. Combined with the leadership team that has been with Bloom historically, the ones that actually built the foundation and the technology of Bloom, the combination of these leaders is a powerful force to be reckoned with. This is a leadership team that is driven to drive change and to scale Bloom's business and evolve it and accelerate at the rate in which we need to and which we're going to.
Thank you, Sonja. Venkat, I want to spend a minute on the cost side. How do you feel the innovations that you're driving in engineering improve product costs, and what does this mean for the industry and for sales?
Yeah, good question, Carl.
Cost reduction is part of our DNA. We constantly, constantly value engineer our product. We also make optimizations in the manufacturing site. Furthermore, we actually work very closely with our supply chain, our partners, to challenge them to reduce costs too. It is a constant, constant thing that we do. In addition to that, one thing we have done over time is every generation of product we release, because of the increase in the power output, it automatically reduces the cost. To give you an example, if you go from Bloom 5.0 to Bloom 7.5, it is going to increase the overall power output by 50%, but based on the analysis, it's going to reduce the cost by 30%.
Also, historically, what we have done is, if you look at every time in terms of the cost reduction, every time we double our fleet, cumulative fleet, the costs have gone down by 28%. So that's a historical average. So with the innovations that we do, we constantly monitor it. I think we have helped a lot in the cost reduction. So now, with the lower costs, actually, we can open up the market in many ways, right? We can go to places where we are not cost competitive, and also, it's going to increase our international sales significantly.
Venkat, thank you. Glenn, how about services?
Yeah, to Venkat's part about the flexibility driven into the product, as I mentioned earlier, there are also our technology team driving backward compatibility.
So that means, from the service point of view, we're constantly evolving and learning and driving improvements into our customer and core base. But the service is very much around people. And I'll come back to the comments from Sonja earlier on about culture. And to add to that, our DNA is founded on innovation, continuous improvement, and collaboration. And we've also put in place processes and feedback loops that feed that DNA and drive a continuous improvement, continuous learning into the organization. So I take that coupled with our technology, our mature technology we've got in the field, our exciting emerging technology that Venkat's gone into briefly, coupled with our people. And I believe that we've got an unassailable competitive advantage in technology, processes, and people.
It really is truly all about the people. And at Bloom, we make it about the people.
As Glenn and Venkat reinforce, the technology and our foundation based on innovation is beyond comparable, and our people are absolutely a part of that solution. So very proud of the people aspect of Bloom. We'll continue to drive forward and continue to evolve how we grow talent, how we manage talent. It's all part of our amazing evolution and journey that will fuel Bloom's success.
Sonja, Glenn, Venkat, thanks for speaking today on how Bloom is scaling the business and unlocking the power of Bloom's technology. I'm honored to serve with each of you. Now, let's get back to work.
I want to thank my colleagues and everyone for joining us today. Before we take your questions, I'd like to reiterate a few key things about our business. As we highlighted today, our flexible technology platform can be used across multiple applications. Our revenues are growing into large markets.
We are reducing costs and improving margins, and we're moving towards being operating cash flow positive. Our balance sheet is significantly stronger, and we have the ability to fund our existing business and investments in our technology to capitalize on new opportunities and achieve the kind of meaningful growth that investors in today's markets want and deserve. We have a sound financial model that is distinct from our peers and competitors. And importantly, we have an executive team that is focused on execution, which is critical to achieving the growth plans that we highlighted today. With that, we'll take your questions.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back from the break. We're going to spend a little bit of time going through some of your questions that we were able to capture before the event.
And now, with me, I have KR and Sharelynn, so they're going to help me work through this process. And our goal is to make this a bit informal and have a conversation and respond to your questions and provide some more elaboration, especially on pieces of the presentation that might have been garbled as we went through it. So with that, Sharelynn, I want to start and go to you. Our U.S.-based expansion strategy is a big part of our growth story. And at least on my end here in Chicago, it didn't come through. So I want to start with you and give you a moment just to elaborate on what we said in those slides before people have to go back and see them online.
Thank you, Greg. I guess this is the year of agility and resilience.
I think the case in point with what we're just dealing with as far as technical issues today, I think, only highlights the need for resiliency. And resiliency is a great intro point to our U.S. expansion strategy. It's really a three-pronged expansion approach that really does unlock a lot of new market for us. First of all, a series of cost reductions have allowed us to open up new markets. Today, we sell into roughly five states. We are now in the middle of working on going after nearly all of the states by 2025, and in 2021, more than 28 states. This is all happening because of our ability to be able to not only compete cost-effectively, but my second point, resilience, as I opened with. Resiliency unlocks additional value on top of just the cost of energy.
Our resilience and all of our estimates provide additional value to our customers between $15 and $30 a megawatt-hour. So there is a certain value to resiliency over and above the cost of energy. The third element that's really important to our U.S. expansion is our path to sustainability. Our ability to be able to use any flexible fuel today, as well as be able to migrate to cleaner fuels and zero-carbon fuels tomorrow in the field, allows us that path to sustainability. So really, to recap, it is a U.S. expansion strategy that's coupled with our ability to dramatically reduce cost. At the same time, we've added value in the most robust way to provide resiliency in the United States, along with a path to sustainability. So we're feeling really good about all of the market opportunity, which leads to a $200 billion TAM by 2025.
Great.
Thanks, Sharelynn. That was very good, well said, and a big part of the overall framework that I presented on the financial side. So let me start going into the questions here that have come in. The first one is from an investor. I'll actually take it. It's in regards to what can we expect in terms of guidance, metrics, and financial reporting going forward so that we can assess Bloom's growth and performance. When I came in after the first quarter, we talked about, just given some of the uncertainties around installation and other parts of the business, that we weren't going to do quarterly guidance, and we suspended that through the course of 2020. As we look forward into 2021, what we've presented is an annual guidance.
So I've tried to create a framework here where we talk about not only the growth of the business through our expected 25% top-line growth in revenue, but I'm also going to highlight where I expect to be on the profitability metrics within the business. I think we've made a tremendous amount of progress as we've gone through the year, and I expect that to continue. So we're going to look at both our gross margins and how they improve over time, as well as our operating margins, and that's a big part of the story. The fourth metric that I'll spend some time on each quarter and presented it as part of the framework is around our cash flow for operations. I think a fundamental part of our growth story is becoming cash flow positive. And the first place we will focus is on our CFOA metrics.
Hopefully, we've created an annual framework here that gives you the sense of what we're trying to accomplish and expect to accomplish over the course of the year. Then each quarter, as we present our earnings, we'll give you an update on that annual framework and how we think we're achieving against that, what are the risks, the opportunities, and to the extent we think that framework changes for the year, we'll update that. I won't be providing a look forward 90 days around guidance. The other part of the process, and this is based on some good feedback that I received from a lot of people here, is the quarterly reporting process that we go through. Today, we use a very brief earnings release followed by a very detailed shareholder letter with a lot of data in it.
Then KR and I participate in an earnings call where we spend an hour, hour and a half talking about where we see the business today, where we expect it to go. Going forward, my expectation is that earnings release will have a lot more of our headline data in it. Back to where we are on our metrics within the framework so we can see our performance on that. We will then move into our presentation, which today is primarily some financial slides and maybe a quick highlight or two on what's happening in the business. I would expect much of what's in the shareholder letter today around performance and metrics will move into a slide deck and be available on our website.
And then from the discussions, KR, myself, and hopefully some different executives from the leadership team that you saw today participate each quarter in that earnings call to give you a sense of where we are. I've found some things in the transcripts that are often we should be highlighting more and giving people a sense where we are, especially around our profitability metrics. So that'll be our process going forward: an annual framework, an update quarterly on where we are, and hopefully even more transparency in how the business is operating so you can evaluate the health of the market as well as the performance of the team as we work through the business. So let me go to the next question here. Okay. So Sharelynn, I think this one will come to you, and I'll participate in it as well. But why don't we start with you?
Also an investor question. People talk a lot about solar and wind, not fuel cell technology. Are we going to be a bigger player in clean energy, and where do we fit into that? So why don't you take that one?
All right. Well, first of all, solar and wind are clearly really important parts of our energy future. And there's plenty of room for other solutions. As we think about what customers actually pay, there's a lot that goes on behind that meter. And what people care about is that cost per kilowatt-hour. And when you look at the ability of what Bloom can provide, we have a very unique value proposition in being able to provide modular, flexible resiliency at a scalable way down to 250 kW, up to 30 MW or larger.
So we have that ability to be a really important tool in the toolkit, if you will, in a broad energy strategy and in the long-term energy transition. I think the world needs Bloom.
Yeah. Good answer. We'll let it go there. This one we will share, though. The Bloom solution has always been considered expensive. What's changed to make Bloom more cost-competitive? So let me take the first part of that. And we talked a lot about it in the script here today, starting with KR. And hopefully, you found that a theme through our presentations. Cost down, cost reduction of our core product is fundamental to the DNA of Bloom.
Beginning with the first products as we built it in generation one through where we are today, the team has consistently looked for ways to leverage simplification of the product, manufacturing processes to take cost out, and working with our supply chain to go do that. What you've seen is a product here that is taking the cost out significantly, no matter what period you measure it against, on average of 10%-15% a year. We'd expect that to continue going forward, not only as we leverage the cost opportunities of an increased power density in Bloom 7.5, but just all the learnings that we've had that we'll transition through. I think as we talked about on prior calls, our cost down is not a step change.
I don't see as we introduce a new technology that we step down from one product to another and take a large change within one year. But it's more about maintaining that trajectory as we introduce new technologies. And we've so far been successful to do that, and our plan is to continue to do that going forward. So Sharelynn, I'll pass it over to you because I think the whole cost equation is important not only as against our competitiveness versus other solutions, but how we think about growing the business as well.
Yeah. Absolutely. Certainly, being cost-competitive is really important. And that's the reason that we have been fanatical about cost reductions as well as value creation.
What we've seen truly is that when we've done all of the studies of how you really, really provide microgrids for resiliency, there is no cheaper way to provide a microgrid for that resiliency that's so needed right now than using Bloom for primary power. We are the best, most reliable, modular, flexible, and cost-effective way to provide energy. That's just the microgrid application, for instance. So we are looking across a variety of applications, whether it's primary power, whether it's utility-scale power, whether it's microgrids, as well as the new emerging solutions that we've talked about. And providing a cost-competitive, high-valuable solution is what we will do. And we know we're in that position before we enter any new market. And as you heard, we're going after 28 markets now, excuse me, 28 states now, when we've gone after fewer states in the past.
So this is definitely part of what we track and is certainly part of why we know we'll be effective when we move forward into these new markets.
Yeah. Great. Thank you. I have a question here from Stephen Byrd at Morgan Stanley. And I'll start it with you, Sharelynn, and then we'll kick it over to KR as he's in California. But what are our views on the likely long-term LCFS pricing in California? So in relation as we think about our biogas products and how we play there. KR, I guess we'll start with you.
Okay. Hi, Stephen. And hello, everybody. So that's a great question.
And LCFS is a Low Carbon Fuel Standard subsidy that exists today in California that allows you to use a renewable fuel either directly into an automobile or convert that to electricity and then charge an electric vehicle and thereby get a very good credit by offsetting the carbon. This is a policy that exists today. Now, for Bloom, we can do this in multiple ways. We can create the electricity using biogas more efficiently and cheaper than anybody else because the purification needed for that biogas is a lot less for our systems compared to anybody else. Also, unlike other plants, because of our modular nature, we can capture the biomass in small quantities in small farms and be able to produce that electricity.
So we can create a lot more of this electricity, and we can create more cheaply without the logistics of having to aggregate large amounts of biomass. And therefore, we have an unfair competitive advantage in the market to be able to use this technology. Whether that credit exists or not in the long term is purely a margin issue because even without the credits, we can make money in this business, and we can do good for the planet. So Stephen, your point about this is extremely important. And that's one. The second thing is we believe for the same logical reasons biogas LCFS exists, renewable hydrogen LCFS will exist. And our electrolyzer product, using the amazing amount of solar and wind we have in California, will be able to make that hydrogen and inject that into the pipeline.
And we have partners wanting to work with us that are in the gas pipeline business that want to work with us. And we can use those molecules again for LCFS. So we see this as a win-win, win for the customer, win for us, and win for the planet.
Great. Thanks, KR. All right. Next question is from Paul Coster. It has to do with South Korea. So I will start with Sharelynn and then ask KR if he has any points to add on this. It's a pretty simple question, and it was a big part of our presentation. We've had a lot of success in South Korea. It's a big part of our business, but not so much progress in other international markets. And he's asking why and what's our plans to chang
e that. Yeah. That's a great question.
The arrangement we have in Korea has been a really great learning ground for how to do business in international. We talked about the model being fairly resource-light for Bloom. Our partner, SK, is on the front end working with the OPCOs, operating companies in Korea. We are supporting them. They provide the construction and the installation and tier-one service. Bloom, we stay very closely coupled with SK to really enable them. We've been very deliberate in our growth strategy. When we want to plant that flag in a country, we want to do it the right way with the right partner. That's exactly why we brought Azeez Mohammed on. His singular goal is to find and replicate similar partners like SK in international markets. The ability to provide a broad portfolio of solutions, particularly as we look at hydrogen and electrolyzers, provides a lot of opportunity.
We're seeing a lot of opportunity, but we want to prioritize, and we want to make sure we find those right partnerships.
Yeah.
And Sharelynn, I think you covered a lot of that really well. Paul, the one thing that I would add to your question is the following. What are you going to see going forward? You're going to hear us announce some big partnerships in the coming years in markets because Europe is primed for what we do. Finally, the Middle East, the conditions are getting great for hydrogen to come on there as well as for them to take carbon seriously. And when you look at those things, the Middle East market opens up. We are at a price point where South America becomes competitive.
We were not at a price point, as you saw from before when we were at $0.18 per kWh in 2010, to be thinking that. At $0.09 per kWh, South America, here we come. So this is the reason we hired Azeez. And he is a proven leader who has operated in these continents. And you're going to be hearing some partnerships. And again, we have worked hard to lay the foundation for this capital-light, our intensity-light, our partner picking up those loads to build those markets. So we'll very carefully select the best of partners. SK has set a very good benchmark and a role model for us there. That's the kind of partners we'll pick. You'll be hearing about those as time goes by, and Azeez is excited to get started and has already started this work.
Great. Thank you both.
Thank you both for that answer. This next one, I'll take. This comes in from Raymond James. Pavel asks, "What's the capacity of your production facility in Delaware? What's its current utilization? And at what point do you need to build a new fab? And where would you likely locate it?" So we talked in the third quarter's earnings call about where we are on capacity. And specifically, that has to do with our stack capacity in California. And we are going to go through a process here, and we're finding a new location and ordering new tooling. And we're going to effectively double our stack capacity here over the course of 2021. And a large part of that will be as we operationalize production of Bloom 7.5.
So, its timing is very well that we can add that new tooling in a new location and migrate additional stack production into that facility when we go forward. We'll have enough capacity to do that. But Delaware is an interesting question. That's not the question I get most often. Most often, it's around the capacity of our stack. So right now, with a couple of shifts, with two shifts in Delaware, we're about 50% of capacity. We just invested some additional money into the facility to open up new space that we can utilize more efficiently for our associates as well as for our work that we need to do there. And we've got some outside space as well.
So we think we can add significantly to our stack capacity and handle that within Delaware, especially as we add additional shifts as need be in order to better utilize that space. So we think we've got a lot of space there. From an investment standpoint, it's a much smaller investment if we were to require a new fab and needed more space to do that, a much smaller, about a third-ish of what you'd need to invest versus the stack production. And we'd have flexibility to add that assembly where we wanted. But for right now, we are very happy and have the opportunity to continue to grow our Delaware facility. And we'll continue to add more work into that facility. And it's a great team there that we leverage.
So I think there's a lot of room in that space before we'd have to ever think about where to add additional space going forward. Let me go through here. Let me catch up. Oh, this one is. Let me start, KR, with you, and then I'll pass over to Sharelynn if need be. This is a carbon capture question, and it comes from Michael Weinstein at Credit Suisse. Can you discuss more about your carbon capture technology? Is this an in-house innovation? Do you have partners involved with that? And maybe you can start about the technology, and then we'll let Sharelynn talk about the commercialization of that.
Sure. Michael, that's a great question. We have not spoken much about it, but we've been working it. And ever since we started the company, we knew this was an advantage. So why? What does it mean?
Here's the simple thing. When you take air and natural gas and you burn it, like happens in a gas-powered power plant, a CCGT, a gas turbine, any of those things, what comes out as exhaust? Predominantly nitrogen because air is 79% nitrogen, 78% nitrogen. And once the combustion happens, it's greater than 80% of that air coming out is nitrogen. So you've heard about other companies doing carbon capture where they want to take the air, they want to purify the air, just take the oxygen out like you get your oxygen in your hospitals and inject that kind of oxygen alone into the gas power plant. As you can imagine, oxygen is expensive, and doing that process is expensive. What happens with Bloom?
We get oxy-fuel for free because of that miraculous ceramic membrane that we have that only sends oxygen across and keeps all the other ones that are unneeded like nitrogen on the other side. So only oxygen goes into our fuel side. What does all that mean, right? First and foremost, is this just a thought process, or is it real? It is 100% Bloom technology. We have a module working, a prototype working where we send natural gas in straight from the pipeline. We get our highly reliable, always-on electricity at very high efficiency. But through a pipe, we have shown in our very first prototype, not 90%, not 95%, 99.8% pure CO2 coming out of that pipe.
And if you can either use that carbon dioxide or sequester that carbon dioxide like people have been talking about for all other technologies (and by the way, the oil and gas industry does this in scale today), it's not something new. The world knows how to take gas and put it into the ground. That's not rocket science, right? So if we combine that with our system, just imagine a world where America's abundant natural gas is being used for reliable power with zero carbon in the atmosphere. Climate change is not about renewables versus fossil fuels. It's about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We can create zero carbon electricity with the most abundant fuel available today. Then the question is, are you competitively well-positioned, and will the economics work out? Let me give you some numbers so you can understand this.
If you take a 750-mMW power plant, CCGT plant, the amount of exhaust that comes out of those chimneys is roughly 1,200 kg per second. Don't worry about the numbers and try to figure out what that means. But on the Bloom system, it's less than 120 kg, 10x less. So you're handling a lot less, number one. Number two, the amount of CO2 in that dry stack is between 4% and 5% in the CCGT turbines. On a dry basis, on our exhaust stream, we are close to 60% CO2. And with a very simple filtration process, we get it to that 99.9%, 99.8%, whatever we need to. What that will mean is with no subsidies, nothing, we can be below $30 a ton to get carbon capture and sequestration done.
So if and when, and hopefully soon, the world values carbon and puts a price on carbon, if it is less than $30 a ton, it's completely paid for. So you're getting out of natural gas zero carbon electricity completely paid for at that price. What I can tell you is economically, if you compare solar or wind plus storage, and then you take it to what we can do with our system, we will be competitive day and night, any day, any night, anywhe re. Sharelynn?
Yeah. Thank you, KR. We, exactly as you described, we have a pretty autonomous solution coupled with this carbon separation module to do that final separation with our fuel cell. We also separate out a pure stream of hydrogen, which can be used as well. We are lining up commercial demonstrations now.
And whatever and whoever we need to partner with on the sequestration side, we are able to. So very flexible. We don't need to line up singular or exclusive partnerships. We are going through demonstrations. You will see demonstrations of the solution in 2021.
Thank you both. I've seen a couple of questions in here on cash, cash burn. And Pavel asked this one, and I'll just answer it and then try to incorporate a few questions I saw in here on safe harbor. So he's questioning my math on if you're $950 million to $1 billion of revenue next year at 25% gross margins, why would you have there be any cash burn at all? And as you think about the numbers year-over-year, right, the benefits are going to be our largest one-time benefit will be around our cash interest expense.
That's going to be down over $40 million versus last year, which is a huge benefit in our cash flow from operations and closes a large share, if not over half, of our usage gap this year as we get into next year. We also have in our estimates currently around some modest increases in our working capital related to safe harbor for projects that we'd have that would grow roughly another $20 million-$30 million-ish that is there, and that gets us close to that approaching break-even on cash, so you're correct. We should be very close to that number. I've left open given the amount of uncertainty so far, and hopefully, we'll get clarification as Carl talked soon around what to expect for ITC, and given the dramatic, right, we're not going from 30 to 26 or 26 to 22, but we're off to 22 to 0.
My assumption is that we're going to have a lot of customers that are going to want to carry those benefits into the next year that will be able to get those deals under contract, and we'd want the additional inventory for that, which would be a working capital usage, which would take us away from that break-even point, so Pavel, your math's not incorrect. If anything, I have left myself a small place in there around the working capital needs related to ITC specifically, but you're right. At this level of revenue, given our fixed pace, at these levels of margins, we are very quickly approaching where we need to be, and then once we get to the other side of that, we should continue to have that slope of the line growing going forward, so hopefully, that answers your question. I will go to the next one here.
Let me just get it here. KR, this probably is best for you given its technology nature for it. And it's from Raymond Scanlan at Iridian Asset Management. Can you comment on the ability of a solid oxide electrolyzer to deal with a variable power input one might see from wind and solar relative to other technology, specifically PEM here, in which you seem to which is deemed better to deal with that variability?
Very good question. And look, I think the question for everybody to think about is the solid oxide system is an inherently superior electrolyzer because it operates at higher temperature. And physics and chemistry and thermodynamics, these are the laws of physics one cannot break, say that that electrolyzer is better than other electrolyzers. So obviously, it is perfect for this application. But there are certain things that we will not venture to do.
For example, we would not want to be inside a car that starts on and off and a cold start because if you need to run to your grocery store, you don't want to turn on your fuel cell car and wait for it to warm up for eight hours before you drive there, right? So that's the application we will not do. In all these other applications, we have an unfair competitive advantage, number one. So the question that's being asked is because wind and solar are intermittent. Mother Nature gives it when you need it and doesn't give it when you don't need it, and that's why you can't rely on just them if you want to turn on the switch and have your electricity. Under those circumstances, when you flip it, will our electrolyzer work?
We have a thermal management system around our electrolyzer, and that's proprietary to us again of cracking the code because of which we will solve the problem. If I say anything more to you, I may have to hire you and have you sign an NDA. So I'll just say, yes, that is an issue that we have to deal with, and that is an issue that we have a design solution for that's very elegant.
Yeah. Great. Thanks, KR. Thanks, KR. Sharelynn, I'm going to come to you with this one. It's in relation to the number of target customers. And just as when I sat with one of my first prep meetings with KR, and he talked about the number of customers always being 2/3 existing, 1/3 new, no matter how you measure it, which has turned out to be true.
And I remember having that discussion with you as we prepped this process. Going forward, it always seems to be quarter in, quarter out, period over period. It seems to work that way. But can you speak to the number of target customers as you expand your geographic footprint? How many of your existing customers are you considering in systems for those new target states? So as you think about all those states that we talked about moving into new, how do you think about new versus existing customers there?
Yeah. Yeah. First, existing customers. We see that as we will be looking at every existing customer as ways that we can help them, whether it's migration of what they have or expanding into other facilities. Many, if not most, of our existing customers have facilities in areas and geographies that we haven't yet helped them with.
So every existing customer is part of our target, number one. Number two, looking at expansion customers, there are certain verticals where resiliency and the offer of what Bloom can offer from a price, security, and predictability, and the ability to have the modularity that's needed. There are certain industries, data centers where we've been very strong, retail distribution centers, oil and gas, industrial tech, pharma. So we have our sights set. We've been very deliberate in looking at the market and making sure that we also have the solutions. Healthcare is at the top of that list. So I should have started with healthcare. So we have a very deliberate approach. Our sales organization is being geared to go after these opportunities in new ways.
I might have mentioned, if it didn't glitch, that we will now have a very large whales sales team that goes after these large multinational, if not multi-state type of customers, as well as a mid-market segment-focused sales team that is more industry segment and more geographic-centered. When you look at the United States, the areas where we are most cost-effective, these 28 states, as well as where the resiliency is an increasingly large issue due to the climate and natural disasters, they seem to align fairly well. What's also new, other than the coasts, is going up into the Great Lakes. So we are really kind of gearing up to accelerate, if you will, where we were a bit more pragmatic and deliberate. We're gearing up now to be able to serve across these different markets, mid-market, multinationals, as well as many more states. So we're getting ready.
It's time to go.
So there is one thing I can add, Sharelynn, to what you said, which is also, as you go into the Great Lakes, which you very correctly pointed out, what we are learning from customers, potential customers, is their ability to future-proof with our assets. And let me explain that for a second. In these states, there's a lot less renewable and a lot fewer options these corporations have. And they're looking at their ESG requirements. They're looking at their own corporate responsibility. They're also looking at regulations that may come down the pipe that force them. The beauty with the Bloom system is they can buy the systems with the natural gas infrastructure that they have today and lower their carbon footprint and lower their air pollution and not use water, in addition to putting resiliency.
But as other optionality like hydrogen comes along, our systems future-proof them as opposed to some other investment that's going to create a stranded asset. And that, I think, you've seen as a very big advantage when you're talking to potential customers in these regions.
Great. That was good. Thank you, KR. Thank you, Sharelynn. Those were good answers. I got a couple more here. I'll try to hit them. We keep getting more and more in, and I want to be conscious of time. So let me just take this one quickly. Michael Weinstein asked, "Can you comment on backlog visibility in your 2021 guidance for revenue?" So during the prepared remarks, I talked about nearly 100% visibility for our U.S.-based installations from our backlogs.
So what that means is the vast majority of what we have planned in the U.S. next year is not only under contract, but it's going through some part of that phase of whether it be design or permitting or site preparation. So I feel very good about the U.S. And some of the installations that we weren't able to get to this year are on the plan for next year, and we've got a pretty good head start on those. So I feel good about that. On the non-U.S. installations, those primarily in South Korea, the way that generally works is we may receive a booking and an acceptance in the same quarter. There is no installation process for that. We obviously have a pipeline of projects that are coming up, most of them through an RFP process or some other type of award process.
And we have a strong pipeline with our partner, SK, on the deals that we're targeted to win, and we're in a good spot. So as I look forward into 2021, specific to that business, there are some deals, obviously, that we've won and are in our backlog. There are some deals that we're very close to winning that we expect to be in our backlog, if not by year-end, then early next year. And then to fill it out, there's a very robust pipeline of future deals that we think we're well-positioned on more than to fill our expectations for 2021.
So as I sit here today, I feel like I've got a great visibility into our revenue expectations for next year and have it detailed out by a project by project where those projects are going in, what quarter those systems are going to be made, what's the targeted date for installation, and how do we go execute on that. So I feel like I've got really good transparency as we go forward. We always have our risk on making sure that the installations happen. And I don't know where we'll be in a COVID environment next year, but we've managed through it very well this year. And I expect, as we continue to work our way through that, those risks abate and we continue to perform. And it's part of our annual guidance framework. So hopefully, enough detail, Michael, on that.
I had one here I just wanted to go to, and I apologize. Give me one second. We just answered that one. We answered the intermittent one. Where did it go? Sorry. Let me just get one here. KR, I'm going to come to you for this one. It's a bit of a history. Obviously, in 2019, there were some concerns that we had around some of the different markets that we are into today. Pavel asked this one about, I'll just read it. In August of 2019, you described an unexpected sales headwind from California and New York due to their focus on the renewables portfolio. What's the latest on that? Are we seeing that in other states? He mentions New Jersey and Virginia. Policy, are we seeing a similar situation with that? How do we think about that risk within our business?
That's a good question.
And the way we see it, and again, Carl spoke to our policy front. It is one of educating people that resilience is as important for protecting the people and the planet as the long-term carbon reduction in the atmosphere is. Otherwise, you're asking the question, is long-term protection of the planet more important than the short-term protection? There is no tomorrow if you cannot protect today. So it is not an or. It's an and. And that's the conversation we have with people. And today, if you need resilience, when you have six, seven days of continuous power outage with PSPS kind of events in California, there is nobody out there that disagrees with us that these kinds of resiliency solutions are needed. And that cannot be done with anything other than our kind of microgrids that operate. We're uniquely positioned here.
In a post-COVID world, there is also greater understanding that air pollution is equally important, SOx, NOx, particulates. So if you ask people like the Air Resources Board, again California, understand this extremely well and know how good Bloom is from an air quality perspective. It's an environmental justice issue because most of these backup generators otherwise get put in socially disadvantaged communities and affects them disproportionately. So there's an awareness of that. So these are the conversations we are having. We are not arguing for carbon reduction. We are arguing for carbon reduction and resiliency and using this as an approach. And our message is resonating. And so this is the way we stemmed the tide of that movement that simply wanted to get rid of every fossil fuel.
I don't think there's anybody on this call that believes that while we would all like to see that happen, it's probably a few decades before that's going to happen. And in the interim, the best of solutions is natural gas. And the best way to take natural gas and produce electricity with the least harm to the planet today is using a Bloom system. So that's the message we are getting to these states. And our message is resonating. Great.
Thank you, KR. Sharelynn, I'm going to come to you next on this question. We talked about starting to sell our electrolyzers in Korea, and we just shipped our first hydrogen unit this month there. But it looks like the main hydrogen demand driver is going to be in Europe, given the European climate law.
What's our plans for hydrogen specifically within Europe, whether they be electrolyzers or fuel cells?
Yeah. So first of all, comment on Korea that they very much intend to be the world leader in the hydrogen economy. So they are moving quite aggressively. And Europe is certainly, through their goals, moving. And we're seeing a lot of activity. Focus on Europe is exactly very high on our list, and it is exactly what Azeez will be focused on. We are looking at a variety of very large, significant partnerships, evaluating what markets look the most right for us. We see a mix of opportunity. There is opportunity for traditional fuel cell technology. There's opportunity for hydrogen fuel cells, and there's opportunity for electrolyzers. Our goal would be to prioritize on the markets where they could take advantage of our entire portfolio.
And with partners, as we've talked about a few times, that look a little bit more like SK, very large, a lot of scale, a lot of reach, and a huge ability to be able to represent Bloom's whole portfolio and our ability to be able to help them provide more comprehensive solutions. So yes, Europe is at the top of the list and more to come soon.
Great. Great. Thanks, Sharelynn. Hey, I know we're coming up on time. And if you guys are okay, I want to keep going. I got a lot of questions here. We'll go a little bit over. I know we're in the middle of the day, but with the video, we got a little bit late start. So if you're okay, I'll just keep going. And we can click through a few more, and then we'll end just a few minutes over.
But there's a lot of good ones here, and I'll try to get through them as quick as we can. Jeffrey Osborne from Cowen asked, "I'll take this one. It's about U.S. revenue guidance for next year. And do we expect to kind of be that 2/3, 1/3 U.S. versus Korea, which we showed in our earlier slides?" Jeff, I'll tell you, we went back, looked at the data. It's traditionally been about a third of the business has been international versus U.S. This quarter and next quarter, my expectation is, well, I know that we will be above that. We'll be above that third. We're going to have more shipments as part of our overall going to Korea. But as we go through the back half of the year, for our plan next year, we will be far more the majority of U.S. as we go through it.
We won't probably get dialed down to a third being Korea versus U.S., but it'll be less than half, so in that third to half range, I think, next year. But as your expectations, you should expect fourth quarter, first quarter. We've just been very fortunate on winning some large orders, and we've taken the opportunity to ship those units to Korea, and then over time, as we add more countries, as Sharelynn and KR have talked about, I would expect international to continue to be a bigger part of our revenue plan going forward. I'm going to ask this one, we can spend a little bit of time on, and maybe this is a good question to spend a little bit of time on, and we can add to it and don't feel like we need to close here in a minute.
But let's make this the last question. It's also from Michael Weinstein at Credit Suisse. The simple question is, what are we most excited about? Are you most excited about Gen 7.5? Are you most excited about hydrogen? Are you most excited about international expansion? Are you most excited about all the other technologies enabling to our fuel cells? So Sharelynn, why don't we start with you? I'll go, and then we'll let KR provide his view on it.
All right. Great question. I feel a little bit like a mom right now that doesn't want to declare a favorite child. What I would say is I am most excited to see Bloom become much more center stage in the energy circles and in energy transition. Far too often, I see discussions about storage or wind or solar, and fuel cells need to be part of the equation.
What is clear is Bloom has a role and a really important part alongside the other technologies to be able to help us in a very practical, prudent way make our way towards zero carbon. So I really look forward to Bloom really raising its profile and seeing Bloom become a much larger player in the energy landscape at large. And then, of course, all of those favorite children are a key part of making that happen. And at the end of the day, we are focused and remain steadfast on KR's vision. We will provide the most affordable, resilient power for everyone in the world over time. So we are on our way.
Great. Great. Thanks. For me, it's kind of I feel like we're at an inflection point. And it's not a technology. It's not an initiative.
It's not that we have opportunity and flexibility with our balance sheet. It's not that we have a robust place to invest. It's not that we have the opportunities. I really feel like Bloom's at an inflection point. When I came to the company and sat with my first few coffees with KR early on and asked him really about how the company came together, how the investment was made, what's the growth trajectory for it, I would tell you the part of it that I underappreciated was the technology roadmap. And maybe it's my GE training and looking, show me the tangible on it.
And as I went through it, I really did my personal underwrite around understanding where the current technology, the platform that we have today, where it had an opportunity to play, how that market expanded with cost down, underwrote that cost down discussion, and got very comfortable that that inflection point was there and felt like this was a great place for me to attend to join because it was right there.
I think as I've gotten in and understood it even over my first couple of weeks, first couple of months, and saw how that technology roadmap plays so very well as Bloom as a platform and how you can add enabling technologies and solutions like carbon capture, like biogas, like marine to our core product, but at the same time could bring in hydrogen in other plays to really expand the market opportunity in knowing that the company had done a lot of the hard work, right? It had built out a manufacturing capability. It had built out a supply chain, a global supply chain. It was nearing well on $800 million of revenue. It had a leadership team and an organization, a resilient one to go do that. It has all the pieces in place to go execute on that, and that's what I'm most excited about.
We have a product that works very well in a lot of different opportunities. We have a team that can go execute on that. And we have an excitement and a confidence that I feel is we're clearly at that inflection point. And I see it as I run the financials out and look forward to it. I'm very excited about the way in which it ultimately the financial expression of that roadmap and that inflection point. I see it in the numbers when I roll it up and go forward for it. And that's what makes me most excited is how the whole thing comes together on that. So KR, I'll leave it to you. You can answer the question, and then I'll leave it for you for closing comments on that, and we'll close out after that.
Okay. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Sharelynn.
And, Michael, you asked you put a list of items to choose and say, what are you excited about and what are you excited about? And if it were a lightning round question that Greg had given me saying, "We have only five seconds," I could have answered it in one second, which is yes. I'm excited about all of the above, right? But given that I have a little more time, the first thing I'll say, in addition to everything that you said, there's one other thing I'm super excited about.
We have built an amazing leadership team, and we have built an amazing employee base that actually will execute the heck out of this vision and deliver the results we need, not just for the well-being of the planet, but for the stakeholders who have believed in us like you and come in along with us for the right. So I'm super excited about that. Let me elaborate a little bit on the first part now. Look, it's one thing to have a vision and try and build a platform. I'm just giddy getting up every morning going to work because we can now put these things to work. That's super exciting. I mean, what else could one want?
I mean, think about 20 years ago, I was taking little ceramic powders and pressing them in a little thing and making a wafer and trying to see if it'll generate enough electricity to power up an LED light bulb. Here we are today. This company has created it all, right? I'm super excited about that. But why? It's not the invention. It's not the innovation. It's not just the execution. It is the impact it's going to have. And if you think about it, the idea, the bold vision was affordable power for everybody on the planet. And we kept working at it all out. We have repeated again and again, cost down is in our DNA. But guess what?
We are in the zip code, as I see it right now, of being able to be the most affordable way to deliver power behind the meter for a customer anywhere on the planet. We are on that path. There's no stopping us. That flywheel is just moving. It took a long time to crank that flywheel. And boy, did we hit hurdles? Did we get banged up? Absolutely. But did we have the resilience to get up and run and get this flywheel going? Now this flywheel is spinning. There's no stopping us. Okay? That's what I'm excited about. And what will that deliver? What it will deliver, unlike any other company that you're going to deal with, is this holistic view of energy that is safe, sustainable, reliable, resilient, affordable, and accessible.
You put those six criteria, and you mark against every other technology that you're dealing with and ask who else can deliver those six items to you comprehensively using a platform. And why are we talking about the platform more now and not earlier, right? It was like the early tablets that even some of the most innovative entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley tried to bring about 20 years ago. Those tablets did not take off, not because those are not innovative products, but the ecosystem around it didn't exist. There was no Wi-Fi. There was no bandwidth. There were no apps. There were no GPS. You couldn't geolocate. Those things were not useful as a platform. But an iteration of that, when the time was right, became the smartphone. And God, we cannot live without it today. The ecosystem around what we need to do is right here, right now.
And we are the right company that's going to execute on that. And that's what I'm most excited about. Greg, back to you.
Great. KR, thank you. Very well said. KR, Sharelynn, thank you for participating in the Q&A. Thank you for all your time over the last weeks and months preparing for this. I think we did a very good job of telling the story on behalf of our team members and our investors and our customers. So well done, and thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for your time today. And we look forward to continuing this conversation. So with that, we'll end. Thank you.