Friday, June 28, 2013

LENR Race to Market


President Obama, in his June 25th, 2013 speech on energy policy, imposed carbon limits on power plants, while providing 8 billion in federal loan guarantees for alternative technologies. He highlighted the construction of two new nulear plants in Georgia and South Carolina, but did not mention LENR (Cold Fusion) as a viable future source of safe, non-polluting energy.
In order to demonstrate cheap district heating, Sweden gets one of the first industrial Hot E-cats. An excellent report on the potential for expansion of disrtict heating in cities is provided at the AtomEcology site.
London, Ontario (pop 370,000) has a privately owned district heating utility servicing the city's central business core. Hence, it is a prime prospect for switching from natural gas to cheaper LENR. Also, wih the trend to higher densities,  a group of progressive developers might access feasibility of utilizing in-ground heating/cooling pipes for a major new subdivision.
An automated factory in the USA is now producing modules for Rossi's 1MW industrial heaters. He and his anonymous US partner are having some success with co-generation (heat and electriciy) by getting high enough temperatures for steam generated electricity.
Vancouver, Canada became world headquarters of Defkalion Green Technologies, with that city becoming the likely site for production of their Hyperion domestic heaters. Journalist, Jeane Manning on her blog ChangingPower, reports on her recent visit to their Vancouver HQ.
Seattle-based Brillouin Energy Corporation has engaged SRI International's help in scaling-up their hydrogen/nickel based reactor for the commercial market.
The dark horse in the race is Black Light Power of New Jersey.  BLP under ownership of Dr. Randell Mills, has been in the quest for the holy grail of energy the longest of the contenders. He claims to be able to produce electricity directly from water. In May 2012 he announced that they will enter the market in 2013.
It appears the E-cat will take the lead in industrial sales of LENR units. Either Defkalion or BLP could be first with sales of domestic units. Stay tuned. 

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Monday, June 10, 2013

Electric Utiltiies Face Crisis

Here is a comment posted in response to an op-ed piece published in PhilipMcCleod's political report on a possible sale  of London Ontario's electric utility:

GRID vs Power Generation by End-users

Farmers, industries, institutions and home owners are increasingly adopting solar panels. Efficiency is improving while costs are dropping. Once there is a breakthrough in energy storage devices more and more consumers will disconnect from the grid.

Municipalities, who are essentially electricity re-sellers and maintainers of local delivery infrastructure, will find themselves with declining captive customers.

Upper-level governments also have to worry about de-commissioning and replacement of ageing nuclear plants, combined with the specter of a disruptive game-changer called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. LENR for short. Yes, it's about to happen. See:
http://hydrofusion.com/news/wanted-pilot-customer-for-ecat-1-mw-plant and
http://coldfusion3.com/blog/customer-sought-for-first-commercial-lenr-heating-plant
If readers want to get further informed, Google any of "Leonardo Corporation", "Defkalion" or "BLP", followed by the term LENR.

London Hydro has a CEO and a Board of Directors. They have more of an eye for evaluations, market and technological trends than do our local politicos  -and us pundits.