[Aeronaut]

JimmyT wrote:

Indeed…however if the predictions on the ultra-low cost per unit and per kWh hold true…you can bet that there will be millions of them built and then much more overall waste heat will be produced as we consume orders of magnitude more power in our society due to the near-free cost of it 😉 That old supply-and-demand curve thing.

No one would ever need more than a megawatt.

Just as no one would ever need more than 640K bytes of memory in their computer.

-Dave

ROFL absolutely!

How’s this scenario- 20 years from now, (if that) when the X-ray converter engineering is cut-and-dry, and ever smaller, lighter packaging become THE competitive advantages for FF factories, the electric air car will become the new Model T. Imagine at least one FF in every garage or back yard…

Yes and I can see implementation of the Moller-skycar finally becoming a reality. And people will still be talking on their cell phones while driving/flying and applying their make-up. Only instead of having a fender bender as a result, they will come crashing thru your roof.
Yep, much like Moller. Except there’s a new pilot’s license classification and air traffic control infrastructure in the works where we’ll fly like airliners- on autopilot, with the autopilot being coached from the ATC computers. Government’s not as dumb as it may appear at times, lol.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Hmm….

So, the HVDC systems us AC transformers to change the voltage at each end, rectify/invert to/from DC at that voltage, etc.

SO, if you want a DC tranmission/distribution/household use system, at each step you invert to AC, use a conventional transformer to change the voltage up or down, then rectify back to DC…

Why would this be better???

If somebody (say a Peer) really wanted to do HVDC, we could generate the DC by re-fitting the Hoover Dam’s powerhouse with Faraday Disks. I suppose said Peer would have a strong position in copper futures, of course…

Aero;
Peer? No Peers in America. Moguls, senators, and Pork Kings, yes, but no Peers.

Rematog;
Each of those “steps” is lossy, of course. I suppose if the power is cheap enough, you don’t care, though.

Peers do officially sanctioned science. The Faraday Disk is the world’s oldest DC generator design and is still used when lots of DC amps are needed at a really low voltage and the price of the input power can be ignored. Scale this up to the pork level, and I suppose you could get any DC volt/amp output you wanted. Good job for a big computer- I’d guess around 80 disks, with diameters of at least twenty feet.

And all that still might be cheaper to build and operate than the readily apparent ways.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

I’d invest in air conditioning, lighting, pump manufactures, water treatment equipment companies (esp. reverse osmosis), battery companies (for all those electric cars), electrical equipment manufactures (transformers, transmission, solid state power controls, etc).

Things that people will want more of if the the cost of electric power is lower AND availability is nearly unlimited (in the long run). Electric power would no longer be a limiting resoure…it would be a manufactured good! What will be the market growth in Africa for air conditioning when there is cheap power available………

A major and exponentially growing power requirement is computation. Google’s distributed data centers, the internet, remote computing, all these 24/7 power hungry servers…they just suck up the juice.

The cost of the internet is mostly the electrical power required to run the infrastructure. With cheap/free power you can expect all sorts of interesting things in the computational arena.

There is an endless demand for supercomputing. I expect the future will have desktop computers being essentially dumb terminals, and computational resources will be delivered as a service. Bandwidth will be essentially free, what you’ll pay for is how much computation you used.
Yes, and Google will take SUCH good care of your data … I suppose you could store locally and process remotely, but that’s not much of a wall, Chinese or otherwise, for those who value their privacy even a little bit.

Thank goodness for paper and safe deposit boxes! Computers didn’t go mainstream until I was nearly 30, so one of my definitions of a ‘green’ computer could be alien to a lot of people.

With 64GB solid state drives going for around $150 in single pieces (pricewatch.com/hard drives), the electrical price of commercial and residential computing is going to plummet while effective speed skyrockets. I’m planning my next computer around 2 of these in a RAID o configuration so’s I can cheap the CPU and motherboard and probably never notice the rig’s not ‘state of the art’. 😉

[Aeronaut]

The principle reduces to how long you’d be willing to stay in the garage with the car idling. Hopefully it’s an electric car. We don’t know the effects on the climate, but who really cares when we know it’s deadly to hoomons? No further scientific proof needed other than to support stands.

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Hmm….

So, the HVDC systems us AC transformers to change the voltage at each end, rectify/invert to/from DC at that voltage, etc.

SO, if you want a DC tranmission/distribution/household use system, at each step you invert to AC, use a conventional transformer to change the voltage up or down, then rectify back to DC…

Why would this be better???

If somebody (say a Peer) really wanted to do HVDC, we could generate the DC by re-fitting the Hoover Dam’s powerhouse with Faraday Disks. I suppose said Peer would have a strong position in copper futures, of course…

[Aeronaut]

Phil’s Dad wrote:

Concerning the need to capture some of the x-rays. Watch Eric’s video. Particularly the question and answer part at the end.

The title of this thread suggests a discussion of converting the grid to DC. How about converting the grid to 3oo Hz?

I wouldn’t count on it in our lifetimes, Jimmy. The reason is the sheer number of 50 and 60hz AC motors built every day and electrical engineering documents built around those freqs. Besides, multiple outputs at those freqs may be more practical for industrial applications.

Yep, 5phase 60hz or 6phase 50hz is the way to go – but my goodness that’s one heck of a distributor cap. :bug:

A 300hz base rate would work well in most of the world, but over here we’d do better with 360hz. The reason is that a 60hz sine wave’ zero crossings (0 volts, where it begins reversing polarity) occur at 120hz.

Now, the real beauty of solid-state ignition is that we can more precisely match output to load. The more predictable the load, the less we need fill-in/filter caps. From what I’ve seen of commercial distribution caps, they’re used for wave shaping.

Personally, I don’t see DC as a distribution format. The grid’s upgrade plan is based on doubling the voltage so they can halve the current. Since power (lost, in this case) = the square of the current times the resistance (impedance here), halving the current should quarter the energy lost in long distance transmission.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Well stated. But be careful about using the “everyone thought the earth was flat” argument. That is pretty much a myth. About anyone who could read realised that the earth was a sphere in the middle ages. What was controversial was whether the earth rotated around the sun.

Jimmy, I started out to say “I take your point” but then I thought “haaaang on -what percentage of the population could read in the middle ages?” So I think I’ll stick to my guns this time and use your earth round the sun thing in future.

Take care.

Applying the 80/20 rule to filter a population twice will show 4% of a population controlling the other 96%.
And 4 times will show 0.16%. And eight times will show 0.000256%. And 16 times will show ~0.0000000007%. Which is 1/25 of one person! 😉

4% shows us how any population can easily be mis lead. I suppose another division will show us the top dog in charge of the environmental industry and it’s supporting pseudo-science? Perhaps he only has half a mind to do this, so we’ll divide again…

[Aeronaut]

JimmyT wrote: Concerning the need to capture some of the x-rays. Watch Eric’s video. Particularly the question and answer part at the end.

The title of this thread suggests a discussion of converting the grid to DC. How about converting the grid to 3oo Hz?

I wouldn’t count on it in our lifetimes, Jimmy. The reason is the sheer number of 50 and 60hz AC motors built every day and electrical engineering documents built around those freqs. Besides, multiple outputs at those freqs may be more practical for industrial applications.

[Aeronaut]

Phil’s Dad wrote:

Well stated. But be careful about using the “everyone thought the earth was flat” argument. That is pretty much a myth. About anyone who could read realised that the earth was a sphere in the middle ages. What was controversial was whether the earth rotated around the sun.

Jimmy, I started out to say “I take your point” but then I thought “haaaang on -what percentage of the population could read in the middle ages?” So I think I’ll stick to my guns this time and use your earth round the sun thing in future.

Take care.

Applying the 80/20 rule to filter a population twice will show 4% of a population controlling the other 96%.

[Aeronaut]

Sorry, I couldn’t find it right off the top. I may be wrong in the context of a commercial machine. Hopefully I am, but I’m sure the engineering test model will be scratching and clawing to deliver enough power for repetitive pulsing from several iterations of the drift tube and X-ray converters.

[Aeronaut]

My understanding is similar, except that in addition to 100% of the solenoid’s output partially recharging the input caps, the balance of the power required for the next cycle would cut into the X-ray converter’s net profit output. Thus, it’s likely to be a long hard slog from unity to the first useful megawatt hour.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

I personally just hope FF can kick in before too many billion$$ or even trillion$$ have been poured down the carbon mitigation sink hole.

Agreed.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

…
When I was reviewing the block diagram this morning I got to wondering if we really want much of an output cap bank, since it sets us up in a DC only frame of reference when we can easily divide a 360hz trigger stream into (6) 60hz output pulse streams that would drive transformers, coils, etc.

Maybe 1 or 3 channels are dedicated to powering the next cycle, and the rest can be whatever each application’s loads require. IOW we can have our cake and eat it, too.

AFAIK, it’s 330Hz, not 360. Maybe that’s adjustable. Also, AFAIK, the next pulse is powered by 100% of the power from the solenoid-alpha-ion beam, and the usable energy comes from 40% or so “profit power” from the X-ray shell. If that makes any nevermind in circuitry terms. But it also implies that about 60/84ths, or almost 3/4, of total output must be fed back into the capacitor bank for the next shot.
Pulse frequency is a tradeoff between desired power output and electrode life, so I bumped it up to make an even multiple of 60 hz line current. Also, I’m understanding that we needed some of the recharge power coming from X-ray conversion. Not really sure what the percentages are, though.

[Aeronaut]

Rematog wrote: Aeronaut,

Small nit to pick. Megawatts are a unit of power, which is a rate (like velocity), for 13 MW-hr is a measure of energy (like distance) and 13 MW/hr is a rate of change (like acceleration). Steam power plants have load change limits, typically around 5 MW/min change in output.

Yes, cheap electric power would be a god-send to the primary metals industry. Electro refinining, such as for copper, and as a sorce of heat for casting plants, etc.

Also, waste could be reduce using a plama arc furnace, turning it into fully oxidized gases and glass slag. So, so many things become possible and/or cheap if the power is cheap….

FF would be the next best thing to “Friendly Aliens” providing us with high tech……remember “To Serve Man”….(Twilight Zone episode, google it.)

I think I follow, Rematog. I included the timeframe as a rate of production for loading guesstimates so I don’t get greedy and think of that as power/second :shut:

When I was reviewing the block diagram this morning I got to wondering if we really want much of an output cap bank, since it sets us up in a DC only frame of reference when we can easily divide a 360hz trigger stream into (6) 60hz output pulse streams that would drive transformers, coils, etc.

Maybe 1 or 3 channels are dedicated to powering the next cycle, and the rest can be whatever each application’s loads require. IOW we can have our cake and eat it, too.

[Aeronaut]

Brian H wrote:

Power-wise, FF is a good match to locomotives. Currently, around 6,000 Hp is a really big diesel electric. FF at 5 MW would be about this size. So, just need to be able to mount it on a locomotive frame and provide cooling, etc.

No idea what a locomotive frame looks like, but I’m sure the form factor will work without the diesel fuel tanks. What I really like, though, is the idea of melding an elegant energy solution (heat first, and electric as it evolves) into an aluminum or copper processing plant with minimal use of transformers.
Aluminum refining is almost entirely electric already. It is a huge power user. As mentioned, 1/3 to 1/2 of the cost of production, and the industry is desperate for improvement there. Copper I know less about, but as it is easily melted out of ore (almost as easy as gold or silver, historically; it was the first base metal found and used), it would be in plating and other processes that the main benefit would come there, I think. But you’d have to know the entire cycle to see what opportunities for efficiencies would be possible with cheaper power.
Glass, plastics, and the metals I listed above have low melting temperatures. Since a great deal of the electricity goes to making heat, I’m thinking along the lines of a FF module producing ~13MW/hr of useful energy to apply to the process.

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