Alain Sepeda <[email protected]> wrote:
> home energy is not so hard to manage with the following configuration : > > - an LENR CHP/trigen that warm/cool the house, > - a configuration that allows to waste heat if electricity is required > - a nano/microgrid with simple smartgrid control (why not voltage > controlled) cooperating with devices > - smart consumer devices who communicate with the smartgrid to save > energy, slow heating, stop/slow washing program, when peak power is reached > That would be a reasonable approach with solar panels but it is too complicated and too expensive for cold fusion. > today you pay mostly energy, but with LENr you will pay peak power > capacity... This will change product engineering. > Yes, but the increased cost for higher peak capacity is trivial compared to the cost of implementing things like a nano/microgrid. I say this based on incremental increase cost for additional standby power generation. Look at the retail incremental costs for one manufacturer, Generac, with natural gas (NG): 6 kW, $1700 16 kW, $3,400 22 kW, $4,300 http://www.lowes.com/Electrical/Generators/Home-Standby-Generators/_/N-1z0x2n8/pl# ! The high end is 3.7 times more powerful for only 1.6 times more money. The actual cost difference is only $1,600. The equipment is not much larger: 6 kW, 36" x 27", 360 lb 22 kW, 48" x 25", 476 lb There is no way you can justify the cost of implementing a nano/microgrid or smart consumer devices when you can solve the problem completely by spending an extra $1,600 on a generator that takes up 12 inches more space. Whatever a cold fusion generator ends up costing, the incremental cost in percentage terms should be similar to the incremental costs for standby generators, because the electric generator and the interface to the house wiring is the same. For the 6 kW unit you need a cold fusion cell that produces 24 kW raw heat, and for the 22 kW unit you need a cell that produces 88 kW. That should not be much bigger or more expensive. Assuming the device is an Ni-H reactor the additional material cost will be trivial, and the actual incremental cost will be similar to today's standby generators. Suppose you normally need 9 kW at most. You could buy a 16 kW unit and have plenty of capacity to spare. But suppose you are thinking of taking up welding steel garden statues as hobby. You might need an extra 9.6 kW, 19 kW total. (Welding takes more electricity than any other home hobby I can think of!) It would make sense to just buy 22 kW unit. Spend an extra $900, and you never need to think about it again. Remember, you are saving $162 to $396 per month. Why worry about an extra $900? Most people will end up buy much more capacity than they need. This is similar to the way we buy computer equipment these days. Everyone buys a 1 TB disc even if you only going to use 0.3 TB. I have a large APC battery backup system that will last for 39 minutes in the event of a power failure, even though the power seldom fails for more than a few minutes. It costs $138. I could have gotten a smaller model for $100 to $129, but they would only last ~10 minutes. Why bother? (The APC unit tells you on the control panel how long it will last in a power failure. Mine says "39 minutes" as of right now.) - Jed
