Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[Rezwan]

Your quantitative analysis (copied below), from the perspective of that worthy reporter, is speculation based on a yet-to-be-proven concept.

This puts it under the heading of “overselling” and reduces your credibility. Even if you’ve put a “might” of “if” earlier in the discussion of the science. All of your calculations rest on something that hasn’t happened yet, and you’re selling the results as if they are a done deal. The reporter will hang back and wait for more concrete results.

Put yourself in the reporters shoes. If it’s about results – he certainly doesn’t want to be caught prematurely selling some idea.

Our issue is, how do you keep interest in the story before you have the results? And how do you make results the icing of the cake? The heroic effort of scientists in the face of uncertainty is, a more inspiring story and, more to the point, the only one we can factually assert at this time, pending those pesky results.

Brian H wrote:
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Now, the economics.
A complete prefab generator and maintenance housing, about the size of a home garage, is expected to cost around $250,000 in mass production. This is about 1/20 the cost of best current plant construction costs for generating installations. ….

Imagine yourself as a government or investor with $XXX,000,000 to put down on new power generation capacity OR operation/upgrade of existing plant. Which are you going to put your money into: (1)technology which has suddenly been rendered obsolete by a 20+:1 cost disadvantage?