Jed Rothwell wrote:
Terry Blanton wrote:
Okay, so, say you have a machine which puts out 500 Watts with 50
Watts input and the model cost $5,000. Would anyone buy one?
I would, in a heartbeat. Especially if you can arrange to eliminate the
50 W input after she revs up, and self-sustain.
I am not sure exactly what I would do with it,
Personally, I would use it to power the sump pumps here in the event of
a grid failure.
Lead acid hydrogen generating batteries can be dangerous in an enclosed
space, and keeping a rack of them on a charger in the cellar would not
make me sleep better at night (and I'd need a large rack of them to be
much use in a real emergency). Keeping large amounts of gasoline on
hand to run a gas powered generator also has problems. Hooking an
NG-powered motor generator into the gas utility line is expensive and
non-trivial. Putting solar cells on the roof to power everything in an
emergency seems peachy until you price them, and until you think about
what happens in a real power failure and realize that during blackout
season there's typically 5 feet of snow piled on the roof, and climbing
up there to sweep off the solar panels is not the safest activity in the
world when everything which isn't buried in snow is covered with ice.
A self contained emergency generator which didn't need any of those
things -- and didn't generate toxic exhaust -- would be a God-send. If
I could use it to reduce my utility bills as well, that would be just
fabulous; I hate sinking money in emergency power that will never be
good for anything if the emergency fails to materialize.
If you could get the power up to 1.5 KW I'd use it to run the well pump
and some other stuff as well as the sump pumps.
I'm not unique. Lots and lots and lots of people will pay good money
for portable power which doesn't need an umbilical cord (gas line,
supply of gasoline, etc) to operate.
For reference, a mo-gen outfit which burns natural gas and which is big
enough to run a good part of a house runs around $10,000. Lots of folks
have them; there obviously is a market for this kind of thing.
but heck, I bought a
TRS-80 computer and a bunch of other useless but interesting machines
back in the day, and I have never regretted it. It was money well spent.
Actually, seriously, I know exactly what I would do with it. I would
show it to people, to convince them that the technology is real. I have
some credibility with people who have money. Enough credibility to get
them to look at a machine and take me seriously for the few hours it
takes to demonstrate the gadget. Most people who invent such machines
could not get their attention for even two minutes, because they lack
all credibility.
It would be helpful if the gadget was reasonably portable, not too
fragile, and could be set up by an amateur (me) in a few hours at most.
You can't bring such things on airplanes any more but I trust it fits in
the back of a Prius.
- Jed
