[zapkitty]

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 🙂

[zapkitty]

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.

[zapkitty]

Impaler wrote: … The other ‘indie’ concepts like poly-well, General Fusion etc are more like Internal combustion engines, they could undercut the price of the Steam engine level technology, but Focus Fusion stands alone as the Jet turbine of Fusion concept because it alone is not a heat engine which means it can undercut everything else on price and capitol cost once mature.

… errrr… I think your analogy needs a little work in places… for one thing both Polywell and Tri-Alpha are also aneutronic concepts like Focus Fusion. They also do not boil water and do not require expensive steam turbines 🙂

Focus Fusion does have inherent advantages in minimum size and cost but the comparisons to other aneutronic systems are not as lopsided as that particular analogy would suggest…

[zapkitty]

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? 🙂

[zapkitty]

Definitions noted. Execution proceeds. 🙂

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: BTW, that is without doubt the most minimalist website I have ever seen! 6 lines of text, with the first a Bold font.

… you’re right, should have been an

or

tag.

[zapkitty]

Aeronaut wrote: Automakers’ R&D budgets are driven to a very large extent by trying to balance muscle-mobiles with their Corporate Average Fuel Economy (and the implied air pollution) laws. Thus a $100M investment could let them build whatever sells, such as Ego-Boost. This enough to build, staff, and operate over 50 LPP clones per year, a more than respectable Maintenance Of Effort on the auto industry’s part. And it’s enough to get a lot of good press.

… an electric SUV? 🙂

[zapkitty]

… surface surface surface…
… always steal from the best…

Opening teaser on the fusion flyer:

Fusion: 30 years away?
[em]… or just around the corner?[/em]

… then tackle that and maybe 3 other talking points against fusion.

Then pair that with this opening teaser on the aneutronic flyer:

Fusion is a step ahead for EVs
Aneutronic Fusion is a leap for all humanity

… and give the short version of aneutronic in the same format as the fusion flyer.

…dive dive dive…

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: As stated, the aneutronic difference is key. But even key-er is cost.

The projected FF costs, even doubled or tripled, simply render all other alternatives “economic roadkill”, to quote my own favourite phrase. Renewable, conventional, nuclear, whatever. There is nothing in the ballpark, the race, the picture. Combined with dispatchability (responsiveness to demand), distributed installation (siting near demand, wherever that might be), lack of waste stream, and safety (breakdown results in a stopped generator, period), and the only barrier to selling it is breaking through incredulity that anything could be that good.

Generally takes me a day or two of back-and-forth in a blog comment thread and that’s with the advantage of being able to lay out the alternatives and to address the specific concerns of a given person.

Getting similar results from two flyers is going to be interesting 🙂

[zapkitty]

Rezwan wrote: I hear a lot of objections, how are you turning these into selling points on your brochure/one-sheet?

Make the case. You don’t have to convince everyone, just the people with money to invest. Make the case for those people who want their investment in electric cars to have a big return, and who just need a bit of info to realize that investing in fusion research may yield a viable supply of energy, and there are all these great fusion alternatives to be explored – especially aneutronic ones.

Not impossible, I think, but I also think you have to start a step further back than what seemed to be implied in your original post… the bifurcation between the effects of neutronic and aneutronic fusion is almost as profound as that between the effects of fusion and fission…

I will see what I can do.

[zapkitty]

A more apt comparison might be that going all “renewable” will require vast changes in the infrastructure of society and too many ordinary people will be forgotten or swept aside in the struggle to make that change happen. Fusion will make that change both easier and more egalitarian. Fusion will help renewables.

The key here being that to many people “renewable” has become a religion… to the point where they try to fit things into that category that aren’t actually renewable and will respond emotionally to anything they regard as a threat to their concept of what is renewable. And I’ve learned by experience that all too many regard any fusion funding at all as a threat to renewables.

It takes some time to explain to them the irony… that this is what the energy oligarchs [em]want[/em] them to think.

As for forms of fusion, I know the Society promotes the general concept of fusion power, but neutronic fusion using tritium is what 99%+ of the population who are even aware of fusion think fusion power is… and those words set a steep bar to get past with the green crowd. To them neutrons are what weakens the structure of a fission plant and make it radioactive and tritium is what leaks into the environment from the maze of water pipes buried under that fission plant… and as far as fission plants go they are right.

Neutronic fusion is very different in those regards but in an EV setting do you have the time to explain just how neutronic fusion is different? So I’d save the “why even neutronic fusion is better” routine for a forum where you can have that time to get past their preconceptions… and go straight for aneutronic.

[zapkitty]

…. could be worse… could be a fission plant 🙂

[zapkitty]

Brian H wrote: According to this:
http://www.gizmag.com/energy-storage-membrane-created/19996/

500,000X the energy density of capacitors, 12-25% of the cost of LiIon batteries.

Could reduce the weight, cost, and size of FoFus dramatically.

… or not.

It’s desperately needed tech and people are striving mightily to find a way but the chances of any given concept working out are slim at best.

But people will keep trying and one day…

[zapkitty]

Warwick wrote:

… uh-oh… sounds like you’re going to try to cut in on my market for fusion-powered airships… Let the first fusion-powered trade war commence! 😉

Yeah I much favour marine transport over air transport. It’s a lot more aesthetic. And I hate flying. Would a fusion powered airship be feasible? (Are there battery-powered electric motor-driven aircraft of any description at present?)

Yes and yes… manned aircraft have flown propelled by solar, by fuel cell and even by AA batteries 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft

This thread has a lot of relevant comments and speculation about fusion-powered aircraft, even when sidetracked by the seemingly inevitable digression in fusion-powered spaceflight…

https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/560/

(note to self: start thread on fusion-powered tunneling machine and record time until first comment about its potential as a launch vehicle..)

(… I never did get back to that thread… got distracted by a claim that the waste heat from an FF plant would limit its distribution in urban environments… which turned out to be a non-issue when the FF unit was allowed to spare 3 or 4 dozen kilowatts for heat dissipation…)

It turns out that basic 5 MWe FF units would do nicely as substitute power sources for a variety of turboprops and turbofans, but volume constraints in tube-and-wing aircraft designs are a bit of a pain. Airships would not have those constraints.

As for air ship vs ocean ship…

The first thing that leaps out is your assumption of ship speed: 200 mph would be 173 knots. That’s in comparison to the U.S. Navy’s fastest admitted speed of “above 50 knots” for an experimental ship. Now the [em]actual[/em] top Navy speed may well be in excess of 70 knots… 80.5 mph… but at 173 knots that’s not a ship anymore, that’s a loitering ekranoplane 🙂

The primary historical drawback of airships, their vulnerability in the air/ground interface, has been mitigated by modern design techniques that essentially turn them into heavier-than-air ships during takeoff and landing while still allowing them to keep their VTOL capabilities. With these modern design features a variety of large airships have been proposed that exceed speeds of 115 knots and altitudes in excess of 30,000 feet… and that’s before factoring fusion power plants into the designs and fusion would be be especially helpful here with its power availability and no fuel constraints.

So with that in mind I think that fusion-powered airships would beat fusion-powered ocean ships for passenger travel. The airships would be both faster and more comfortable with no swaying decks and the ability to fly above most inclement weather. They would not be limited to coastal ports and could land and take off almost anywhere. And if the weather was good they could sail 50 feet above the ocean surface and get the whole cruse ship vibe going… without seasickness 🙂

[zapkitty]

Warwick wrote: Thanks. The fusion aspect does play a role though – up until now, design has been to do with availability of energy. With a plentiful supply, there are two differences. Firstly, the design can focus on other aspects such as comfort and minimising noise. Secondly, higher speeds may be possible. If it could do 200+ mph and was comfortable, many people would favour it over aircraft for passenger journeys.

… uh-oh… sounds like you’re going to try to cut in on my market for fusion-powered airships…

Let the first fusion-powered trade war commence! 😉

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