“These first plants will cost around $2,000 per kilowatt to build one at a time, but once they are mass produced, Rossi expects the price to drop to around $100 per kilowatt installed.”
That’s really expensive. Coal is about 30 per megawatt. So you’d have to run this 3000x as long as a coal plant just to get the initial costs down.
This, however, is much better than the 9000 per kilowatt for solar.
You say that a 300 megawatt coal fired power plant can be built for 300x30 dollars, or $9,000. If you can make good on that claim, you will have every utility company in the world at your door, checkbooks in hand.
But of course, you are totally wrong. You just don’t realize it yet.
But without the need for the... coal!
The time between refueling the tiny amount of nickel-whatever substance is very, very long in these units.
And the emissions of anything worth worrying about are for all practical purposes zero.
So, assuming this isn’t a scam, you could put a near infinite number of these generator stations all over the place. That means the source of the power is near the destination of use. Less line less. Less infrastructure. Less EVERYTHING that costs a ton of money to maintain.
If, and it’s a big IF this isn’t a scam... large scale power plants would only be needed near major industrial plants where power requirements are just too massive for these units to work.
And that’s just in the near future. Who knows how refined this technology could become.
And please don’t assume I believe in this, just daydreaming about what might be if it’s real. Since this test was so secretive and no one involved is getting named we have to continue to assume this is the scam of the decade until proven otherwise.
I think you’re being pessimistic. Remember how fast electronics evolve. I have no idea what the bottleneck is, but if the last 50 years is any judge, the market is going to grab those things and shake them like a rat.
Someone is going to saw one open, reverse engineer it, sell the plans to China, and then they’re going to be everywhere. The market will have to make them better and when that happens, the prices will drop.
What Rossi is doing at this point is trying to make sure that he gets the maximum about of publicity and cash BEFORE he has to let other people know what goes on inside the reactor.
More power to him. I hope he gets enormous credit, medals and huge sacks full of money. This could be the greatest single invention since the plow.
100/kw is cheep. This is not a continuous production cost. It is the cost of a unit. For about 1500.00 dollars you can have free power over the life of the unit. Sign me up.
Shouldn't we take into consideration the cost to build the coal plant? I mean, we're looking at a $2 million 1 megawatt power plant (assuming it really does work). I can't imagine you could build a coal plant for anywhere near that -- despite the low operating cost.
You are mixing capital costs vs operating costs.
A new coal plant will be $2000 per KW, to build, but depending on the price of coal can produce power at 3 cents per KW or $30 per MWhr.
This Focardi-Baloney machine will cost $2000 per kw to build but have .0000001 cent per KWhr oprating costs. Too cheap to meter, and too cheap to pay attention.
Well, it looks like a bunch of FReepers already responded to your post. Eventually the agreed facts will be there for everyone to proceed from.
>> “This, however, is much better than the 9000 per kilowatt for solar.” <<
.
Or the trillions for zero KW while our Energy department pretends to be searching for fusion break-even.