From: Jed Rothwell
I have been complaining that Penon seems incompetent. It is a little unfair for me to grouse without substantiating my complaints. Let me briefly describe why I am not impressed. The report is here: http://coldfusionnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/105322688-Penon4-1.pdf As I wrote previously: "It says output was 2.5 ~ 3.7 kW, and input was 3.6 kW." That's a BIG PROBLEM. Red flag! If I did a study and came up with an answer somewhere between 2.5 and 3.7 kW I would not publish it. That is an absurdly wide error margin. Narrowing it down in this case is easy. It is trivial. You calibrate. You step the cell through 8 or 10 steps at power levels ranging from 4 to 8 kW. That range covers the lowest to the highest power levels you think the cell is producing. I also said: "I do not think much of the methodology. I recommend calibrations and the use of thermocouple to augment the IR camera." I just explained why calibrations are important. I do not see them in this report. A thermocouple to confirm the IR camera is essential. "I admit I have not looked as closely as I did to the Levi reports, but I am not impressed. . . ." When I saw that gigantic error margin I thought, "What the hell is going on? Why didn't he get a better answer than that?!?" Basically I tossed it aside after that. The method of using an IR camera is crude but it can be done reasonably well, with calibrations and a thermocouple and some other precautions. It is not a bad start. But I would follow up with flow calorimetry, probably air-flow rather than water. A person who screws up a test on this scale can probably screw up a megawatt test too. Measuring megawatts is harder than you might think. It is actually easier to measure, say, 100 W with confidence than it is to measure a megawatt. Jones Beene also got a bad impression from this report. Maybe he tell us his reasons. - Jed Gladly, but it will have to wait till tomorrow. I don’t recall having ever seen a report with so little data being taken, and at random intervals to support an important conclusion. This is the worst crap ever, and it suggests that the guy is not qualified to judge this device, even if the COP were to be huge. My associate in Italy can find no evidence that he is a physicist, a PhD or ever employed in a nuclear facility, but Italy is a large country, so hopefully his CV will turn up soon. If anyone has seen the verified credentials of Fabio Penon, please post them… after all – his opinion is apparently worth about $100,000,000 to AR, so they should be spotless and above reproach.
