BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

Re: BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

It's certainly enough to demonstrate success or failure.

 

easily. We'll know soon enough if it's a success or a failure it would seem.

 

+1

Also, the agreement is for "up to" 250MW continuous power.

Look at the data on Estacado, the purchaser. It's a subsidiary of Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative (RCEC). Here's the data on the RCEC:

Number of customers: 2,467
Peak demand: 34MW
Average demand: 18MW
Percent of energy generated: 0%
Percent of energy purchased: 100%
Residential electric rate: $0.07/kwh.

http://www.rcec.org/rcechome/irpplan/irp07.pdf

So the story is the following: This breakthrough in basic science and power generation is being licensed by ... a 2500-member rural electric co-op that could use <10% of the capacity of the proposed reactor, and which currently gets by with cheap purchased electricity and zero generating capability.

 

Re: BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

That link went bad quick, yet the website is still up.

 

hmmmmmmmm....

 

EESTOR is almost certainly a load of bollocks. These guys seem to be headed in the same direction. It was always pretty unlikely that this was gonna be legit because it's rather shocking from a physics standpoint.

 

You know, Tripp, we missed a great business opportunity. We should have bought bollocks futures. There are so many loads of them around these days that I'm sure their price has gone through the roof.

Tom

 

Unfortunately, unlimited supply and no barriers to entry will keep the prices down to nowt for the foreseeable future.

 

Let's say the environmental impact isn't bad. AND let's say the whole thing will work, eventually. How far out are we . . . 10yrs? 20yrs? 50yrs? Great. We can't even get solar electric usage above 10% world wide, and it has a great rate of return (based off enery used to create it vs environmental impact) . . . and IT is available TODAY.

 

Re: BlackLight Power lands first license agreement for electricity from … water?

I'm on the same page/planet that you are on. No need to have a magic energy source, just a need to live sustainably and understand why. If a magic unlimited energy source were to materialize, we would still be able to severly damage the planet with bad planning and decisions. (e.g. Overpopulation could probably get worse with this magic energy source.)

In the meantime I will continue to try and live as I should. (e.g. Sustainably....and a magic power source is not what is needed for this.)

 

Solar isn't despatchable. Right now, the only renewables that are include geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, and hydroelectric. CSP plants are close, depending upon the amount of energy they can store as heat in thermal salts. They can provide despatchable power for a number of hours after the sun goes down.

If this nonsense turns out to be legit (and that seems a rather remote chance at this point), it can provide despatchable power/baseload power anywhere on the planet. That would be extraordinary...

 

Did you mean PV (and wind too, for that matter) isn't dispatchable unless it incorporates battery backup? Granted that battery banks are often cumbersome, but at least they do exist in the here & now.

 

yeah. Backup batteries are not the answer... at least not yet. They're very expensive and don't have a particularly long life (the PV array will out live the batteries 3-4 times over). Wind could use compressed air. There's an experimental wind farm in Iowa, I think, that is trying this out. They compress air in a rock formation and then pull it back out to generate power when the wind isn't blowing. No idea what this adds to the cost of the power, but it's probably not cheap (or partiuclarly efficient). Molten salts are more efficient than current battery tech and CSP is more efficient than PV (currently). On the other hand, it degrades poorly. You really need sunny conditions to get good power out of it.

The problem is that voltage drops on the grid are BAAAAAAAD. That's why operators have a lot of trepidation about wind being accountable for > 20% of the grid's capacity. As it stands now, PV is great for shaving peak power demands, but it's no substitute for baseload power. The day we have a renewable, clean substitute for baseload power is the day we step into a better world. We have some options but at the moment they don't scale up or are restricted geographically.

 

Thought I would resurrect this old thread and it's sister thread
http://priuschat.com/forums/environmental-discussion/51599-workable-hydrogen-fuel-cell.html
I've spent considerable time working out (mathmatically) some of the grand theory of Blacklight's different approach to physics. Interesting, since there are some very interesting ideas that may have validity. Worrysome, since some of the mathmatics/physics invokes some gyrations that are debatable (but so does QM). If anyone is interested, I can discuss what I have figured out. Otherwise I'm going to keep an eye on the success or failure of the Blacklight undertakings. (I wouldn't put any of my money on it yet.)

 

They're stuffed methinks.