I have tried to get some information from Andrea Rossi about what he and his partner’s plans might be for using the E-Cat for decentralized electrical production. We know that for now, at least, home E-Cats are not on the table, but I have been wondering about using the E-Cat to generate power on a local, rather than a central scale. Here is my back and forth with Rossi on the JONP today.
Me: many people advocate for more distributed power generation, where smaller generators produce power close to where it is used. This has many advantages, including reliability (e.g. in storms, natural disasters), efficiency (reduction of costs andlosses from long distance transmission), flexibility, independence, etc. Is this an area that you and your partners are planning for?
AR: Both.Ther e are different specific situations, we have to make distinction upon. More distributed power generation is more efficient, for example, in towns. Generation isles are more efficient in smaller and insulated locations, just to give an example, but the general situation is very complex, it is not possible a “tranchant” opinion.
Me: Thank you for your reply. Just for clarification — do you mean in your response that centralized power generation is more efficient in towns (e.g. one power station for the whole town?)
AR: Yes, but in any case specific situations can still have to be analysed.
This isn’t a very specific answer, but it seems like he and his partner are certainly thinking about the possibility of small-scale E-Cat power generation. In my estimation, if they were techically feasible there would be a very high demand for this kind of power plant. No one wants to be dependent on the vagaries of the power grid. Every year we hear of the great disruption that is caused in places around the world when power is lost due to storms, earthquakes, floods, war, grid failures, etc. Distributed power generation would allow for much greater energy security and reslience in times of upheaval.
When Rossi talks about things being complex, I would imagine that technical complexity may not be the most difficult problem to solve — I guess that security of the plants is something they would be concerned about. If you had a small remote community powering itself with a local E-Cat generator, how would you keep people away from it who had a strong desire to figure out how it worked?
