Reply To: Focus fusion and transportation

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:
Good analysis and comments! As for the load, I was suggesting that 15kW would be a peak, not an average. Heating would be significant in the northern winters, cooling significant in the summers, but even so 15kW is pretty big. And that’s STILL only 1.5GW demand / 100 homes.

Note that the housing/building is part of the factory unit. I assume that various shell alternatives would be offered over time, and prettification is always a local option, I suppose. As for the foils, I suspect the difficulty is less than you describe; I’d like to see what analysis Eric has on hand about this. Perhaps the patent filing would provide some clues.

The 200 mi BEV exists, if you want a $100K roadster soon, or a $50K sports sedan in 2 years or so: http://www.teslamotors.com/ , http://tinyurl.com/TeslaConvoy . The 200 miles costs about $4 recharge at current prices, a fraction of that with FF. The $50,000 sports sedan would cost the same to lease and run as a $30,000 ICE gas-burner.

Your lead-time comment points out another contrast: it would be slashed by about 90% for FF when the factories are up and running. This will almost make power grid planning a JIT operation, or at least far more responsive.

Oh, yeah, I drooled on my keyboard the first time I visited those links, lol. Now to get a FF license so I can afford one of them.

15kW in my opinion is only on the low end of first shift hours. I think it would be higher after 5:00 local time. My range, furnace, and hot water are all gas-fired, which would change if the township eliminated or even reversed at least my electric and gas bill.

Yep, grid expansion will come down to the time required to finance and permit each installation. That’s a very cool thing because once somebody breaks the ice all bets are off regarding how fast the demand for FF installations and electricity is going to take off.