The Focus Fusion Society Forums Spreading the Word Making the fusion case to Electric Car industry

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  • #10848
    Brian H
    Participant

    Rezwan wrote:

    That’s the nature of proof of concept research. Possibility of a stellar payoff, but don’t put all your money into it. Keep your portfolio diversified.

    *Also, as a nonprofit, we can’t solicit investment, so this is all purely about education for us.

    The no soliciting bit is kind of a pain, but as far as “all your money”, the coffee budget of those companies would exceed what LPP needs.

    #10851
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Brian H wrote: …as far as “all your money”, the coffee budget of those companies would exceed what LPP needs.

    Yes, this is the other point to make in the case to the car industry. So many people leave fusion to big government because they see it as too expensive to tackle. Of course, it may not be as small as the company coffee budget, and LPP is going into cost overruns now. Other approaches may yield quick results or drag on a bit, but all within a far more manageable realm than most people think of when they think of fusion.

    The upshot is – the challenge is to show costs as reasonable, with the incentive that uncertainty may work in your favor for a huge upside. Part of this balanced nutritious energy portfolio.

    #10852
    dennisp
    Participant

    Cost overruns? Nothing severe I hope…

    #10853
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Time is money. The switch problem took up a lot of time that wasn’t spent on actual experimentation and so now the project is in overtime compared to the initial estimates. It was a very small budget to begin with, so it’s not much of an overrun. Two company coffee budgets.

    Although as a percentage, that switch problem is pretty big.

    What I’m saying is don’t downplay the costs. Until LPP or another alternative demonstrates feasibility, it’s all running cost. Hence you will notice the LPP website has a link for investors – as they could use more (this is not a solicitation – just a point of fact. Education : )) Not a huge cost, but it hasn’t hit the point of return, and we can’t be sure when it will.

    If it turns out to be possible, I don’t think fusion will ultimately cost that much. But getting there will still take a reasonable investment, which is required NOW.

    And this is the reasonable case to be making to the EV community. If you want to open up a vast supply of electric energy for your EV’s, you need to start tackling the fusion problem now and in earnest. A great strategy involves investment in fusion alternatives, as government is covering the big projects that won’t be online for decades, but the shorter projects, while considered to be higher risk, also carry the possibility of a quicker, much bigger ROI, and major bragging rights.

    Don’t wait for it to happen by itself. Some expenditure required!

    #10854
    Rezwan
    Participant

    Now that I look at it, that last paragraph sounded like a total solicitation.

    What we nonprofit folk can do is convene events in which people discuss possible strategies for fusion funding. So we don’t actually make that case ourselves, we just serve the chips.

    #10856
    dennisp
    Participant

    Does an internet forum count as an “event?” 🙂

    I’ve been wishing for a couple years now that the government wasn’t so uptight about “accredited investors.”

    (But don’t worry, it was nothing you said.)

    #10857
    Brian H
    Participant

    Rezwan wrote: Now that I look at it, that last paragraph sounded like a total solicitation.

    What we nonprofit folk can do is convene events in which people discuss possible strategies for fusion funding. So we don’t actually make that case ourselves, we just serve the chips.

    I don’t think (?) your communications to members of FFS can be classified as solicitations. IMO. After all, we’re all boosters of LPP from the get-go, and wishing for and recommending private investment among ourselves is hardly a public solicitation.

    I’d guess the line is anyone purporting to “speak for” FFS talking to non-members.

    #10859
    zapkitty
    Participant

    Rezwan wrote: Now that I look at it, that last paragraph sounded like a total solicitation.

    What we nonprofit folk can do is convene events in which people discuss possible strategies for fusion funding. So we don’t actually make that case ourselves, we just serve the chips.

    … but would the flyer be ok if the alternatives were not spelled out?

    Or should it be converted to an invitation to a fusion coffee klatsch? 🙂

    #10865
    Aeronaut
    Participant

    US corporations are having a very tough time deploying capital, so they let it pile up in the savings account to the tune of roughly a trillion dollars while environmental laws and common business sense dictate the need to get more out of every unit of energy. When you look at the economy in 4 to 5 sectors from extraction, processing, transportation, manufacturing, and services, transportation is the common element, and transportation requires energy. Thus energy is a compounded expense category with enormous payoff potential relative to a fixed long-term R&D program.

    Where financial prudence says to budget 10% or less per position, 5% is far better, so why not put a number like .1% of currently investable profits? Besides, its probably tax-deductible for almost any corporation.

    Something else that’s hidden right out in plain sight is the Inc Magazine 500 List. Nearly 300 of those companies on the current list have grown in excess of 1,000% (!) over the past 3 years. And they’re privately owned, which translates into a far less restrictive decision-making process than in a public corporation.

    #10866
    Rezwan
    Participant

    zapkitty wrote: … but would the flyer be ok if the alternatives were not spelled out?

    Yes, keep alternatives vague. It’s a one-two punch sort of thing, where the fusion researchers have the general argument, and then follow up with their pet approach. Maybe a quick list of alt examples so those who get the flyer can google them.

    Or should it be converted to an invitation to a fusion coffee klatsch? 🙂

    🙂
    But of course! Feel free to have fusion coffee klatsches at will! Or not, so that you can save the coffee budget for fusion funding.

    Out of water? Try serving Focus Fusion Coffee Mallows. (Also, please, someone who’s drawn to caffeine innovations, try them and write up a review. They’re not my cup of tea, so I can’t ethically promote them myself.)

    #10870
    Brian H
    Participant

    Coffee Rulz!
    “A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorums.”
    “There’s no such thing as strong coffee, just weak people!”

    :coolgrin:

    #10871
    zapkitty
    Participant

    Edited: Saturday, October 15 2011 01:40 PM

    Outline of a rough draft. Too verbose. Needs serious trimming and condensing.
    But it shows roughly where I’m headed. Thoughts?

    Not Enough Juice For The Grid
    Get Fusion.

    Electric vehicles will need cheap and widespread electric power and they will need it soon if the market is to grow at its full potential. But the grid is not designed to handle such heavy loads and current energy sources can’t grow the grid fast enough to keep up.

    One answer: Fusion power.
    Yes, it’s a big leap. Conventional wisdom says that while fusion has tremendous promise it is always “decades away”… but in fact it may be much closer than you think.

    How could this be possible? The answer lies in the fact that the limited funding afforded to fusion thus far has almost all been channeled into an equally limited set of options. These are the government-sponsored projects such as ITER and NIF and they all happen to be “Big Fusion” projects. They try to tackle big problems with big hardware in big installations and they have equally big costs to show for it. And in retrospect, while they are all worthy research efforts in their own right, none of them are good choices for providing safe, clean commercial power ASAP.

    But several different companies are looking at a variety of different methods of sidestepping the big obstacles that the “Big Fusion” projects are destined to wrestle with. And it so happens that each of the proposed alternative fusion methods would result in much smaller and much cheaper commercial installations than their “Big” counterparts and their research costs are much less as well.

    None of these alternative efforts are “Cold Fusion”. They are aiming for the real deal and several of them would use the same fuels at the same temperatures as the “Big Fusion” efforts but in smaller, more manageable devices. Other companies are reaching even further ahead for advanced fuels that would fuse at even higher temperatures in even smaller units.

    So a variety of relatively small private projects are underway researching smaller, cheaper fusion units that could be easily added to a rapidly growing distributed grid. Each is trying a different method of achieving the goal of fusion power but they all have one thing in common: they need you. They need more investment. Especially investment from people who are not afraid to rock the twin boats of current government fusion research and current energy suppliers.

    Are such alternative studies worth the effort?

    Yes, they are.Their research costs are tiny compared to corporate and government R&D budgets and even the most basic forms of fusion power under study would solve humanity’s power issues permanently and safely. Each of the contenders would have its advantages and disadvantages compared to the other fusion methods but all would leave non-fusion contenders in the dust.

    It is research, there can be no guarantees, but diversified investment in some of these concepts would be worthwhile… because if even one of them succeeds it will change the world forever.

    #10872
    Brian H
    Participant

    zapkitty wrote: Edited: Saturday, October 15 2011 12:30 PM… the first of many edits 🙂

    Outline of a rough draft. Too verbose. Needs serious trimming and condensing.
    But it shows roughly where I’m headed. Thoughts?

    Not Enough Juice For The Grid[, And Not Enough Grid For The Juice]
    Get Fusion.
    [Get Fusin’] :cheese:

    Electric vehicles will need cheap and widespread electric power and they will need it soon if the market is to grow at its full potential. But the grid is not designed to handle such heavy loads and current energy sources can’t grow the grid fast enough to keep up. [For the foreseeable future (a decade?) the charging will mostly occur in off-peak hours, and actually benefit power companies by making use of idle night capacity.]

    None of these alternative efforts are “Cold Fusion”. [It happens that Rossi’s LENR project is getting a lot of press right now. This might change the picture, and if it’s a failure, muddy the waters.] They are aiming for the real deal and several of them would use the same fuels at the same temperatures as the “Big Fusion” efforts but in smaller, more manageable devices. Other companies are reaching even further ahead for advanced fuels that would fuse at even higher temperatures in even smaller units.

    So a variety of relatively small private projects are underway researching smaller, cheaper fusion units that could be easily added to a rapidly growing distributed grid.

    These different [various] companies are trying different methods of achieving the goal of fusion power but they all have one thing in common… they need you. They need more investment. Especially investment from people who are not afraid to rock the twin boats of current government fusion research and current energy suppliers, [and whose needs are for results in years, not many decades].

    Are such alternative studies worth the effort?

    Yes, they are. Even the most basic forms of fusion power under study would [should or could] solve humanity’s power issues permanently… and safely.

    It is research and there can be no guarantees but diversified [diversifying] investment in [into] at least some of these companies could be worthwhile… because if even one of them succeeds then it will change the world forever.

    Selected suggestions, comments, edits in bold and square brackets. Text trimmed for display convenience, not for actual omission.

    #10873
    zapkitty
    Participant

    Brian H wrote:

    Not Enough Juice For The Grid[, And Not Enough Grid For The Juice]
    Get Fusion.
    [Get Fusin’] :cheese:

    Choice of style. I’d leave it to Rezwan 🙂

    Brian H wrote:
    [For the foreseeable future (a decade?) the charging will mostly occur in off-peak hours, and actually benefit power companies by making use of idle night capacity.]

    That’s using current growth extrapolations, which are constrained in no small part by the same limits on power availability that you refer to. To enable an actual global switchover to EV’s will require customers to be able to have a wider latitude as to when to recharge… and that will require both more power and more grid. But the idea obviously needs to be rephrased in the text….

    Brian H wrote:
    None of these alternative efforts are “Cold Fusion”. [It happens that Rossi’s LENR project is getting a lot of press right now. This might change the picture, and if it’s a failure, muddy the waters.]

    That’s why I want to get ahead of it… before the Pons/Fleischman junior memorial league get the fusion tag all screwed up again in the public mind. If they actually have something there are easier and more professional ways for them to prove it. Though I don’t think the rest of the world should hold its breath waiting for that to happen 🙂

    Brian H wrote:
    These various companies are trying different methods of achieving fusion power but they all have one thing in common… they need you. They need more investment. Especially investment from people who are not afraid to rock the twin boats of current government fusion research and current energy suppliers and whose needs are for results in years, not many decades.

    That works.

    Brian H wrote:
    Yes, they are. Even the most basic forms of fusion power under study should solve humanity’s power issues permanently… and safely.

    Oops… dropped a conditional without making the necessary change…

    Brian H wrote:
    It is research and there can be no guarantees but diversifying investment into at least some of these companies could be worthwhile… because if even one of them succeeds then it will change the world forever.

    And that works too… thanks for your input 🙂

    #10874
    zapkitty
    Participant

    Still needs serious trimming and condensing… comments, critique needed.

    Worldwide conversion to electric vehicles ASAP?
    [em]Not Enough Juice For The Grid And Not Enough Grid For The Juice[/em]
    Change the rules: Get Fusion

    A serious constraint on EV market growth is the inability of the current grid to support recharging when and where it is convenient. Current renewable energy sources can’t grow the grid fast enough for a worldwide conversion to EVs in less than decades and will still require rigid enforcement of off-peak recharging.

    So a worldwide switchover to EVs without waiting for the grid and recharging habits to catch up needs cheap and sustainable power ASAP.

    One answer to that is power from fusion.

    How can this be possible? While conventional wisdom says that fusion is “always decades away” in fact it may be much closer, and much cheaper, than you think.

    What changed? The scant funding afforded to fusion has almost all been channeled into government-sponsored “Big Fusion” projects such as ITER and NIF. These try to tackle big problems with big hardware in big installations… and they have equally big research costs to show for it. So various small companies are investigating methods of avoiding the big obstacles that the big projects wrestle with. And it so happens that each of the proposed alternative fusion methods would result in much smaller and much cheaper commercial installations much faster than their “Big Fusion” counterparts… and their research costs are much less as well.

    None of these alternative efforts are “Cold Fusion”. They are aiming for the real deal and several of them would use the same fuels at the same temperatures as the ITER and NIF efforts but in smaller, more manageable configurations. Other companies are reaching even further ahead using advanced fuels for fusion at even higher temperatures in even smaller devices. And the companies expect tangible results in years at most, not decades.

    So small private projects are underway researching smaller, cheaper fusion power units. These would be the units that could be easily added to a rapidly growing distributed grid to support a swift worldwide conversion to EVs. And these small companies all have one thing in common… they need you.

    The research budget of a typical fusion contender is less than what a larger corporation budgets for coffee supplies, but while government investment in “Big Fusion” is anemic at best the funding for more agile fusion solutions has been nonexistent. The contenders need investment, especially investment from people who are not afraid to rock the twin boats of current government fusion research and current energy suppliers, and whose needs are for results in years, not many decades.

    Are such alternative studies worth the effort?

    Yes, they are. Even the most basic forms of fusion power under study should solve humanity’s power issues permanently… and safely. Each of the contenders would have its advantages and disadvantages compared to the other fusion methods but any and all of them would leave non-fusion contenders in the dust.

    It is research and there can be no guarantees but diversifying investment into at least some of these companies could be worthwhile… because if even one of them succeeds then it will change the world forever.

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