Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote:
> the big question is how the utilities, the grid will react. > > if the grid moves quickly to a microgrid, a mesh-grid, a smart producer > grid, then people will be happy to save some investment on their CHP with a > sharing platform. > I predict that cold fusion will be more cost effective with no grid. Not a big one like we have now, and not small, micro-grids either. The reasons are a little complicated, but they are food for thought -- A grid with local generation, such as PV solar, is needed because: 1. PV generation is intermittent and it stops at night. 2. People seldom install enough PV capacity to produce all the power they need, yet sometimes they have excess capacity, such as when they are not home. So they want to sell the extra power. 3. Battery storage is expensive. None of these reasons apply to cold fusion. It will not be intermittent; it will cost little to install all the capacity you need; the value of excess electricity will be zero so there will be no market; and it will not need much of a battery. Probably a supercapacitor will do. Trying to sell excess electricity from cold fusion would be like trying to sell municipal water to your neighbors. The cost is very low and everyone already has all the water they need. Sharing capacity with cold fusion makes no economic sense. Rather than maintain a grid, it would be cheaper to give everyone a generator with 110% of their likely maximum demand. If someone often reaches capacity, they will buy another generator, the way some people nowadays buy an extra refrigerator. Suppose the average house needs 30 kW of capacity. Vendors will sell many generators of 20, 30 and 40 kW. These will be the most popular sizes and they will be mass produced at a very low cost. The 30 kW will be only marginally more expensive than the 20 kW model. I base this prediction on the cost of automobile engines and standby generators. Given the likely low cost, if you need 25 kW, it will be cheaper to buy a 30 kW generator, or an extra 20 kW unit, than it would to pay to maintain a grid. The grid will not enhance critical reliability. It does not do that today. I used to know someone who had electrically powered life support medical equipment in her house. She had to have an emergency generator. With cold fusion she would have to have an extra generator, or perhaps two extra generators. A grid would prevent you from losing power when your home generator breaks. It does have that advantage. But a failure will be extremely rare once the technology matures. Ask yourself how many times your home furnace has failed, or all of your plumbing has plugged up with the toilets overflowing. Yes, that happens, but it is rare. You can call 24-hour emergency repair service for a furnace or plumbing. I am confident that 24-hour emergency repair service will be offered for cold fusion generators as well. Having a repairman come at 2 a.m. will cost a lot, but not as much as the long-term cost of maintaining a grid. It happens that my house has two furnaces and two air conditioners, because we built an extension. Both furnaces are small. On a few occasions, one has broken. I did not have to call for 24-hour emergency service because the other furnace keeps the house reasonably warm. (One furnace makes the house too hot at that end, and chilly at this end, but livable.) The repair people from Peachtree Heating and Air came during regular business hours, which is cheaper than having them come at night or Saturday. For the first several decades of cold fusion development, before ultra-reliable thermoelectric devices are perfected, I expect that many people will install two cold fusion generators. Or the designers will come up with tandem units that duplicate the components most likely to fail. If the cold fusion heat source fails more often than the boiler and turbine generator, there will be two independent cold fusion heat source modules connected to one boiler and one turbine. If one cold fusion heat source module fails (say, because it leaks hydrogen), the machine will continue to operate with the second module, while it triggers an alarm and e-mails Peachtree Heating and Air. The repairman will come by with a replacement module. You will be out of power for an hour or so while he installs it. Decades later that will be a repair robot, not a repairman, and failures will be so rare they will be reported in the Local News section of your newspaper. Decades after that, thermoelectric power supplies will be built into any machine that needs electricity, and there will be no electric sockets in walls, and no home generators or central generators, except for a few specialized purposes. - Jed
