Then you just aren't thinking hard enough. First, you wouldn't need "new infrastructure" for such a device. Over unity means just that. It creates more power than is required to set it in motion, whatever form of motion that may be.
You wouldn't be able to give excess away, because everyone will be able to produce their own power according to their own need once this discovery is learned by the masses. Imagine there is no longer any need for electricity. It is now freely abundant.
Energy drives our entire economy the whole world over. Industry will collapse and disappear overnight. Sure, there will still be some consumer industry, but nothing near the scale there is now, all of which is based on petroleum energy and by products, and the cost of producing energy itself.
A cheap clean, alternative renewable energy source would be devastating to our petroleum based industry we have today, and will cause quite a economic downturn and a very long period of adjustment. But it still wouldn't be free.
Completely free energy is another beast all together. We are way too overpopulated for such a thing to become available. You won't die in the cold, but good luck finding a job. They will be very hard to come by.
Food production. Food packaging. Transportation. Health and medical services. Retail sales. Mechanics. HVAC technician. I could go on and on. Just because insects have unlimited energy for their needs, doesn't stop bees from putting away honey. What makes you think that people will just stop working when energy costs go to near zero? They will never actually reach zero, because you still have to make the equipment, and it doesn't last forever. As long as there is entropy in the universe, work will be needed.
Yeah, but when I get my magical over unity home fusion plant, I'm gonna want to use it to power air conditioners and heaters and televisions and computers and clock radios and my new Bose stereo louder than the wrath of God. I'm still going to be wearing clothes and talking on the telephone. And even in this wonderland of free energy, I might want to leave the house occasionally, and that's going to require some kind of vehicle. I'm not going to build all those things myself.
A cheap clean, alternative renewable energy source would be devastating to our petroleum based industry we have today, and will cause quite a economic downturn and a very long period of adjustment. But it still wouldn't be free.
Adjustment, I agree. Downturn, in some sectors, but not overall and not for long. The rise of the automobile was devastating to the buggy industry, and household electricity was crushing to the candle and lamp oil industry; but the buggy makers started making cars and the kerosine refineries started making gasoline, and many of them came out all right.
If petroleum is less desirable as fuel, the first effect is that we will import less of it, which will be a bummer for the tanker crews and depot operators, but we'll cope. If the value of petroleum as fuel collapses, then we get cheaper and better plastics, including synthetic textiles.
History suggests that when stuff becomes cheaper, we don't spend less -- we find more stuff to buy. I had a black and white TV for a large part of my childhood, because in the '70s a large color TV cost about a month's pay. Now that a 20" costs less than a day's pay, I have one in every bedroom and a much bigger one in the living room, all with two hundred channels of cable. When necessities become cheaper, resources shift to producing luxuries.
Completely free energy is another beast all together. We are way too overpopulated for such a thing to become available. You won't die in the cold, but good luck finding a job. They will be very hard to come by.
I have my job all picked out -- professional blogger. Sure, it's a niche today, but with all those folks with time on their hands and money to spare since they don't have to pay for energy any more, I think I could carve out a niche. I'm not worried about global overabundance as a great looming threat.