Hell its got me interested. But the skeptic did have a point in GE and the other utility companies probably going along the same route once (if) this gets big enough.

My only other question is that it still needs a fuel of some kind. Granted those big companies have access to all those diverse fuels, I wonder how the average consumer is going to get that stuff. Aside from the folks who perhaps already have natural gas lines for cooking.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

It runs on natural gas, which something like 50% of US homes already have. If they can get the unit cost down, it looks really promising.>> ^RadHazG:
Hell its got me interested. But the skeptic did have a point in GE and the other utility companies probably going along the same route once (if) this gets big enough.
My only other question is that it still needs a fuel of some kind. Granted those big companies have access to all those diverse fuels, I wonder how the average consumer is going to get that stuff. Aside from the folks who perhaps already have natural gas lines for cooking.

The whole extreme secrecy and fuel claims that only be called misinformation (whether intentional or not) leave me unwilling to take -anything- in this video on trust.

He said it could run on solar power, for Pete's sake! This just screams con-artist to me.

The only thing stopping me from calling it a flat-out fraud is that he appears to have actual installations in use. But this video is worthless as a source of more information than that.

>> Michael Kanellos:
20%... But it's gonna say GE



Or Google. Approval for Google Energy for becoming a seller was approved literally 5 days ago.

http://www.ferc.gov/whats-new/comm-meet/2010/021810/E-18.pdf

It's not a fraud. It uses natural gas, and the conversion rate (cubic feet of gas to kilowatts) is much better than a gas turbine electric generator. In fact, it's more than 3 times more efficient. But there are two problems:

First, the cost of electricity will vary depending on the cost of natural gas. In the last two years the cost of gas has varied from $2.50 to $14.00 per thousand cubic feet.

The second problem is the cost. They said that one unit costs $700,000 bucks. But they plan to bring the price down to $3,000. For 3,000 it would be a great deal. But that seems unrealistic. If they can't bring the price down it would take hundreds of years to break even on the cost.

Please please please please please please please please please please please please let this be real...

I am a skeptic, but this could really be the way to transform the planet. Don't worry about the cost folks. If what he said about the materials used is accurate, economies of scale will have them affordable within a decade. Remember that computers went form hundreds of thousands of dollars when they were manufactured a few at a time. Then when they transitioned to homes, they went down to thousands, and now just a few hundred.

The question is fuel. If it is really 1/3rd of the cost, that bodes well. And I'd need a few more technical references on the emissions. If it uses natural gas, it's probably clean. And that remark about 'solar' was edited weird. It obviously can't use solar as a fuel.

All in all, sounds too good to be true. I hope I'm wrong.

>> ^Stormsinger:
He said it could run on solar power, for Pete's sake! This just screams con-artist to me.

That looked like a piss-poor editing job on 60 Minutes' part. He was clearly about to continue on with a qualification of some sort like "if you used solar power to hydrolyze water into hydrogen and fed that into the fuel cell".

I think the real thing they gloss over here is that it produces CO2 emissions. They were comparing it to the pathetic amount of power they got from solar, but solar doesn't require any fuel, nor does it produce CO2.

If it's a big improvement over the efficiency of power plants, it's still a huge deal, and could reduce CO2 emissions via improved efficiency, but it's not a silver bullet.

A silver bullet would be something like cold fusion, zero point energy, some sort of direct matter-to-energy converter, or just a form of algae that produces a ridiculous volume of biofuel.

I'm ecstatic about anything that moves away from fossil fuels toward home-based decentralization. When people start feeling like they are making their own electricity, they will be more likely to support electric cars. Anything to reduce the value of oil will make this a much better world.

Of course I would love to see less CO2 as well, but I'll take any steps in that direction as a giant leap forward.

It's still a strange answer...it seems terribly unlikely that the cell works on both natural gas and pure hydrogen, but on the second look you're probably right about it being an editing issue. Even this view reinforces my belief that little trustworthy information can be gleaned from this video. 60 Minutes blew it...at best, they butchered the science and the claims being made...at worst, they're promoting a fraud.

I could see some minor gains by shortening the transmission distance. But according to wikipedia, transmission losses in 1995 were estimated at 7.2%. That doesn't leave a lot of gains to be made there. It's a bit tougher to dig out trustworthy numbers for just what sort of efficiency fossil fuel plants are getting today...and I'm fading too fast to dig much farther tonight. KrazyKat, where did your find your efficiency and price info?

I'd consider getting one, when they come out - if the numbers add up. Where I live electricity is relatively cheap and natural gas is relatively expensive.

I could definitely see utility companies buying these to put in substations, much earlier than in "every home". Or perhaps natural gas providers selling electricity back to power companies.

The problem with decentralizing power generation is that there really -are- economies of scale here. Large generating plants have significantly better efficiencies in all our current technologies. Centralized plants also offer a cheaper avenue for cleaning the results, whether that means CO2 scrubbing, filtering soot, or handling nuclear waste products. Perhaps fuel cells can change that...perhaps not. But in my mind, efficiency is more important than decentralization simply for the sake of decentralization.

People will support electric cars when electric cars are available that have a reasonable range, can be conveniently and quickly recharged, and have a reasonable price tag. That's likely to be quite a while, given our current battery technology. The question of where the electricity is generated has nothing to do with it.

>> ^MaxWilder:
I'm ecstatic about anything that moves away from fossil fuels toward home-based decentralization. When people start feeling like they are making their own electricity, they will be more likely to support electric cars. Anything to reduce the value of oil will make this a much better world.
Of course I would love to see less CO2 as well, but I'll take any steps in that direction as a giant leap forward.

*long

This video has been flagged as being at least 10 minutes in length - declared long by Trancecoach.

Interesting... They have a countdown clock on their website, counting down till Feb 24, at 8:30am PST.

Maybe they're planning some sort of press conference to release the product commercially. Optimism, yay!

Well, there are downsides to centralized power generation as well. Power decays when transmitted across large distances, and even the most centralized sources still have to be spread across the world.

Some of the problems with any smart grid concept is the financial viability. Why change the whole way the grid works, when all you're gonna do is run it the same way (from power plant to end user, across miles of power cable). Changing the way the economics work, by moving the power production to the home, or to the neighborhood will make a smart grid all the more viable. People will be able to put these things in the house, use up whatever power they need, and the rest will be sold back to the grid, for use in houses that don't have this capability.

One of the solutions to electric car adoption has been sifted a few times in the past, and is about to go into full testing in Israel soon before a scheduled commercial release in 2011. I'm referring to Shai Agassi's Better Place, which has been sifted quite a few times.
By separating the battery ownership from the car, they're changing the cost of the EV from what's the main deterrent today from those cars today, which is the initial investment. Their solution to range is replacing the battery, and as long as they manage their goal of almost ubiquitous charge spots, range will not be a problem for 95% of car users.
This also relates to the smart grid concept by giving power companies the means to store electricity around the grid in the form of car batteries. The concept is called V2G, meaning the grid can take power out of the car when needed, making it a battery for storing intermittent sources, like wind or solar. By itself it's not very useful, but in large EV quantities, it becomes a very viable option.
---
Wow, I sort of went off-topic there, didn't I? This discussion was about a stationary home/neighborhood power generation device at some point.
>> ^Stormsinger:
The problem with decentralizing power generation is that there really -are- economies of scale here. Large generating plants have significantly better efficiencies in all our current technologies. Centralized plants also offer a cheaper avenue for cleaning the results, whether that means CO2 scrubbing, filtering soot, or handling nuclear waste products. Perhaps fuel cells can change that...perhaps not. But in my mind, efficiency is more important than decentralization simply for the sake of decentralization.
People will support electric cars when electric cars are available that have a reasonable range, can be conveniently and quickly recharged, and have a reasonable price tag. That's likely to be quite a while, given our current battery technology. The question of where the electricity is generated has nothing to do with it.

This is getting interesting now. I'd rate this discussion quite a bit higher than the video.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the decay during transmission was estimated at 7.2% back in 1995 (and unlikely to have gotten worse). That's a lot better than when I had expected, and doesn't supply much reason to convert to a new technology.

I've heard a bit about the battery ownership approach (undoubtedly from one of the sifted vids), and that may well offer a solution for the first two issues. It doesn't strike me as helping price, though. We'll see.

I'm far less enthusiastic about using car batteries for grid storage. That sort of aggregated solution has been proposed in other areas. The ones I'm familiar with were mainly IT-related, like using local hard-drives in a company's workstations to store backups. So far, I haven't heard of one example that didn't have serious issues. Admittedly, electricity is fungible, while data is not. But I still think control and coordination is likely to make it unfeasible. Think about the start of rush hour...all those cars that were making up a shortage get pulled off the grid in a very short time. That sort of scenario would make temporary shortages even worse, not better.

It probably -can- be done. I'm less sure it can be done efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. My own prediction is that the approach won't account for more than a miniscule fraction of storage. I'd put my money on non-battery storage, either gravitational or thermal.
>> ^demon_ix:
Well, there are downsides to centralized power generation as well. Power decays when transmitted across large distances, and even the most centralized sources still have to be spread across the world.
Some of the problems with any smart grid concept is the financial viability. Why change the whole way the grid works, when all you're gonna do is run it the same way (from power plant to end user, across miles of power cable). Changing the way the economics work, by moving the power production to the home, or to the neighborhood will make a smart grid all the more viable. People will be able to put these things in the house, use up whatever power they need, and the rest will be sold back to the grid, for use in houses that don't have this capability.
One of the solutions to electric car adoption has been sifted a few times in the past, and is about to go into full testing in Israel soon before a scheduled commercial release in 2011. I'm referring to Shai Agassi's Better Place, which has been sifted quite a few times.
By separating the battery ownership from the car, they're changing the cost of the EV from what's the main deterrent today from those cars today, which is the initial investment. Their solution to range is replacing the battery, and as long as they manage their goal of almost ubiquitous charge spots, range will not be a problem for 95% of car users.
This also relates to the smart grid concept by giving power companies the means to store electricity around the grid in the form of car batteries. The concept is called V2G, meaning the grid can take power out of the car when needed, making it a battery for storing intermittent sources, like wind or solar. By itself it's not very useful, but in large EV quantities, it becomes a very viable option.
---
Wow, I sort of went off-topic there, didn't I? This discussion was about a stationary home/neighborhood power generation device at some point.
>> ^Stormsinger:
The problem with decentralizing power generation is that there really -are- economies of scale here. Large generating plants have significantly better efficiencies in all our current technologies. Centralized plants also offer a cheaper avenue for cleaning the results, whether that means CO2 scrubbing, filtering soot, or handling nuclear waste products. Perhaps fuel cells can change that...perhaps not. But in my mind, efficiency is more important than decentralization simply for the sake of decentralization.
People will support electric cars when electric cars are available that have a reasonable range, can be conveniently and quickly recharged, and have a reasonable price tag. That's likely to be quite a while, given our current battery technology. The question of where the electricity is generated has nothing to do with it.

Well, the decay of power is one thing that makes the current grid bad. There are others, I'm sure, but I can't name any. The point is, though, that this solution won't necessarily come from the power company. It'll come from consumers who will see this as a way to reduce their energy costs, with a one-time investment that will pay for itself over time.

Once they have power generating capabilities in their own home, and they see they can make as much as they need and then some, the next logical step is to try to sell the excess back to the grid. There are ways of doing that today with solar and wind, but they usually require installing an expensive replacement to your current electricity counter (the exact name of the device escapes me at the moment .

The power companies themselves might see this as a more economic way of producing power than building a nuclear power plant, or a coal one. Distributing these in neighborhoods across a city lets you avoid massive blackouts by one power plant going down, like what happened in New York a while back, increasing the survivability of the grid as a whole. I'm in IT, so we're always thinking about Single Points of Failure in a network

The battery ownership approach reduces the price of the car, because you don't need to buy a battery with the car. Electric cars and plug-in hybrids cost as much as they do because of the battery, not because the car is infused with gold. Buying just a car and a subscription for monthly "eMiles", to use Agassi's term, gives you the benefits of the electric car without the cost of buying a battery. Batteries also decay over time, meaning buying the battery with the car (like in the Chevy Volt) would either require replacing the battery every few years, or driving less and less on the pure electric mode.

The smart grid is necessary. It will save money, it will give power companies options they never had before in terms of power management, and it will let end users generate power and reduce their bills by installing green energy producing equipment on and in their homes. It's the only thing that will let us move away from coal burning plants, nuclear plants and the rest of the deal-with-the-devil type of power generation we have today.

I'm sort of enjoying this too... It's not often that I get a chance to actually discuss this topic and articulate my point of view. Keep it going!
>> ^Stormsinger:
This is getting interesting now. I'd rate this discussion quite a bit higher than the video.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the decay during transmission was estimated at 7.2% back in 1995 (and unlikely to have gotten worse). That's a lot better than when I had expected, and doesn't supply much reason to convert to a new technology.
I've heard a bit about the battery ownership approach (undoubtedly from one of the sifted vids), and that may well offer a solution for the first two issues. It doesn't strike me as helping price, though. We'll see.
I'm far less enthusiastic about using car batteries for grid storage. That sort of aggregated solution has been proposed in other areas. The ones I'm familiar with were mainly IT-related, like using local hard-drives in a company's workstations to store backups. So far, I haven't heard of one example that didn't have serious issues. Admittedly, electricity is fungible, while data is not. But I still think control and coordination is likely to make it unfeasible. Think about the start of rush hour...all those cars that were making up a shortage get pulled off the grid in a very short time. That sort of scenario would make temporary shortages even worse, not better.
It probably -can- be done. I'm less sure it can be done efficiently and in a cost-effective manner. My own prediction is that the approach won't account for more than a miniscule fraction of storage. I'd put my money on non-battery storage, either gravitational or thermal.