My PV system uses a 5kW grid tie DC-AC inverter that is all solid state, no moving parts (not even a fan), and is 96% efficient. It has been working beautifully for the last 3 years. Note that unless you make a provision to throttle the E-cat, you will have to at least provide a sacrificial load into which you can dump the excess electricity when the house demand is not as much as the E-cat is producing. This would be the benefit of having the community or large scale grid system - the grid can become your sacrificial load. That's what my PV system does today. I produce far more power during the day than I am using and the excess is pumped into the grid, for which I receive credit. I then can take it back from the grid at night (or any time - when a cloud comes) at the same price as I was credited for putting it in (this is called "net metering" and is required by the Florida Public Service Commission), resulting in 100% perfect storage in the grid (from my perspective) with no batteries required. Overall, the distributed generation system is more robust against failure and more efficient even if the wires are present because the current in the wires is reduced by your local generation. But if you use even a community system, you still have to deal with the distribution wire problem, cost, and undesirable appearance. The cool new product category is the concept of CHP - cogeneration of heat and power. There is already an industry forming around this for producing power from concentrated solar or some other high grade heat, producing electricity for the home, and then using the waste heat to heat the home. Bob Higgins
________________________________ From: Hoyt A. Stearns Jr. [mailto:hoyt.stea...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 12:32 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Steam engines All devices will be self contained with E-ORBO's, M-ORBO's, HephaHeat heaters or as yet uninvented devices-- no connection to any external power sources will be needed at all. They'll be AA batteries that last forever etc. Induction generators are for the near term -- a couple of years, helping to pay for the initial equipment. They'll quicken the phase out the dirty coal plants. All generators (Alternators) are inherently AC which must be rectified unless you want carbon brushes ( you don't ). DC is good for many things, but it has its problems with metal and ion migration, polarization etc. Induction motors don't run on it and they're the cheapest motors.The new Phoenix rapid transit system uses DC but they put in special corrosion mitigation systems. Power companies will fade away and all those ugly high-tension lines will dissappear :-) . Hoyt Stearns Scottsdale, Arizona -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 7:18 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Steam engines On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 11:36 PM, ecat builder <ecatbuil...@gmail.com> wrote: Hoyt: Are you sure the electric company will want unsynchronized AC? I predict that home generators will produce direct current, not AC. DC is safer because it is less prone to cause electrocution. Electric power companies will not purchase this power for two reasons: 1. They will all go out of business. 2. Electric power will be worthless. Selling it would be like trying to rent out 10 MB of hard disk space. This is not an imaginary example. In the 1970s time-share companies rented out hard disk space in increments as small as this. Nowadays, 10 MB of hard disk space can be purchased for about one-tenth of a penny, I think. Unless I dropped one or two orders of magnitude. How will the governments keep the electric companies in business? Why would governments do this? This would be like trying to keep the vacuum tube computer industry in business. I expect there will be some initial attempts to keep power companies, and perhaps even oil companies, in business, but everyone will soon see that this is a futile waste of money. - Jed
