Reply To: Pitching to Arnold

[JimmyT]

Lerner wrote: Ther are two issues here. One is the safety of focus fusion reactors. The second is the economies of distributed vs. centralized power supply.

On economics, there are fairly big savings from distributed energy. If we are talking about expanding energy production, the cost of distribution is significant and would be greatly reduced with distributed production, as would the costs of large-scale outages. Will that counter-balance travel time for skilled labor? You would have to look at some realistic numbers. But distribution from remote centralized GW generators is not free.

I think that It’s quite possible that the savings from distributed energy will actually be greater then the other (considerable) savings from focus fusion.
I know that where I live we pay about a dime/kwh and I believe only about 2 cents of that is generation costs. Now, I know that the other 8 cents is not all distribution costs. And even if it was, all of it can’t be eliminated. But it does give us a pretty big piece of the pie to work with.

In fact, if (as has been suggested elsewhere) this does enable power distributors to eliminate power lines: Do they own the swaths of land those pass over? Or is it just a right of way thing? If they do own it, they could sell it. Lots of land in the aggreate. Maybe enough land to finance the purchase and instalation of the fusion units?

Rematog? Do you know the answer to the land ownership question?

Oh, and how are all the UFO’s going to “gas up” if we eliminate all those power lines? Maybe some intergalactic agreements are needed.