From: Jed Rothwell
In many places. But not, for example, in Texas, where the landscape is flat. Not a lot of uphill to go to. They put some wind farms on gigantic mesas in Texas, which are up in the air but still pretty flat. Not a lot of water out there, either. I expect the Pacific Northwest would be ideal for this. Well, to get back to Peter Graneau's actual proposal - the synergy attaches to an already existing hydroelectric facility. It is another kind of in situ synergy which is not related to wind/solar. It would add its own boost as a separate effect, even when those are added to pumped storage. Any existing dam or pumped storage facility could have this device, assuming it works - as a replacement turbine. Apparently, a lot of folks did not fully understand the implications of his original article in IE, myself included. In short, his suggestion is to exchange the old type of water turbine (which is very efficient but that is not the point) for a new type of turbine, and it looks similar but it can capture "hydrogen bond energy" in addition to gravitational energy. I suspect that some of the net electrical or mechanical power will need to be recycled to do this, but he suggests a 2:1 net gain. This is not exactly the same thing as the water arc explosion, if I understand it. In effect, more net energy is available from water flow itself (according to Peter) but the excess energy is chemical not gravitational. However, I think one of the major problems is that this contention is lacking in real proof, and in a situation where it should be rather straightforward to provide proof and where there would be a lot of interest from people like TVA. Jones
