Kevin O'Malley <[email protected]> wrote: If Edison had started out with cold fusion instead of coal-fired > generators, power distribution as we know it would never have come into > being. > ***Good point. But now that we have this 19th century power distribution > channel in place, we should aim to keep it. >
Why? Who needs it? We did not keep the passenger railroad network in place after automobiles and airplanes make it obsolete in the 1950s. We did not keep the North Atlantic ocean liner infrastructure of docks and shipyards. We no longer have coal delivery trucks standing by in our cities to deliver coal for people's furnaces. The Kodak company dynamited their film production factories a few years ago, thanks to digital cameras. There is never any point to maintaining an infrastructure for obsolete technology. It is a waste of money and resources. The electric power distribution system, and the petroleum refineries and gas stations will be a gigantic pile of scrap metal within a generation after cold fusion takes over. They will be worth nothing to anyone. All those railroad cars used to haul coal will be scrapped, along with a quarter of all the ships at sea (measured in capacity), which are used to haul crude oil. > The rollout for LENR should address what solar power rooftops & > inverters are doing: feeding electricity back into the grid. > The rollout, perhaps. Within a few years it will be used exclusively. There is no point to making a 20 kW generator when you can make a 50 kW for almost the same money. Actually, as I show in my book, chapter 15, houses will consume less electricity than they do now. Many appliances can be run directly with cold fusion heat, rather than electricity. Overall electric power demand will fall by about 30%, whether the electricity comes from the power company or a small generator. See Fig. 15.2 and the estimates on p. 123. The reduction is from 7,913 kWh to 5,500 kWh per year. > Eventually, that will be the PURPOSE of the grid, a decentralized source > of electricity. > This would be like sharing a hot water heater with your neighbor. There is no technical or economic justification for it. Maintaining the infrastructure would cost more than simply providing every house and building with its own generator. In no way would this block the progress of small LENR devices powering > every cash register and street light. > Once thermoelectric devices are improved nothing will stop this. > Again, solar power comes to mind -- 2 days ago I pulled up a few solar > powered walkway lights, as simple as can be, and put them right back where > they were when I was done, in a few seconds. In the previous > implementation, that would have included digging out wires from the > ground. > Exactly. - Jed
