In reply to Terry Blanton's message of Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:42:07 -0400: Hi, [snip] >The annual cost for hydrogen >and nickel, the "fuel", ie a device capacity of 20 kW is about 1,300 >euros, when the value of the energy produced at current prices of more >than 14,000 euros.
...if we assume a conservative 5 MeV / nickel nucleus, and only 30% of the Ni used at a thermal to electric conversion efficiency of just 10%, with the current Ni price of about $15/lb, then the actual cost of the Ni needed to produce 20 kW*yr of energy is only USD74, or about 53 euros (not 1300). Note that 20 kW is enough for about 15 homes (on average), so the annual fuel bill / home comes to about USD5. I have deliberately neglected the cost of Hydrogen because this can be extracted from water free of charge. (If you put a bucket out in the yard to collect rain water ;^). BTW the cost of the device itself (~$5000/10 kW) works out at just $0.50 / Watt which is just fraction of the cost of current power plants (granted this doesn't include the actual plant or generator), but considering the trivial cost of fuel, this should be a bargain that power plant operators (or anyone for that matter) will find difficult to pass up. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/Project.html
