Reply To: Focus fusion and transportation

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

Aeronaut,

Your leaving out the high voltage/high current capacitors and power control/conditioning equipment (heavy stuff). While it would not have to be in the “engine nacelle”, it would need to be aboard…..

Regarding the prior discussion of heat pumps, so what if they are efficent. If FF is even close to as inexpensive as this board assumes, the cost of power will be so cheap that the cost of the heat pump will never be paid back vs very cheap resistance heating. Energy efficency is not a religion, it is an engineering/economic trade-off.

A Prius will never save me enough in gas vs my Corolla to make it worth paying the difference. And a Volkswagen turbo diesel is just as green, more so if you burn bio-diesel fuel. About the same price, and more fun to drive too.

Rematog

Hopefully the caps really can be used to power multiple reactors. Since nobody’s gone into any detail about the power conditioning black boxes, I can only hope they can become “communal property” for at least 50 FF power blocks. In a matrix like that, a few more power conditioning modules could even be attractive from a structural standpoint. Btw- how tall are your ceilings?

Boilers are one of those maybe markets that is already geared to making and selling expensive water heaters to an energy-conscious (cost of steam) market. In that particular type of application, I believe FF would be a natural, with or without net electric output.

I hear you about the cars’ payoff. Since I can squeeze 30+ mpg out of my paid off ’00 Focus, why even think about a new car’s payments, including going back to full coverage insurance? The whole MPG “issue” is a non-starter with me.

It’s probably not possible to recover and use waste heat as cheaply as simply running a few more resistance heaters with FF electric output, as Rematog says. The hardware cost is just prohibitive.

As for the MPG thing, it all depends on the scale. E.g.: the TeslaMotors Roadster (current) and 5+2 passenger Model S sport sedan (2011) are pure BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) which, based on a rough cost-conversion equation, get about 200-250 MPG equivalent. That (plus the absence of maintenance costs for the vastly simplified power train and motor), makes a $50,000 Model S lease+running cost equivalent to a $30,000 ICE vehicle lease+running cost – while providing a MUCH better ride and product.

So the numbers matter.