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New Fuel Cell Twice As Efficient As Generators
Hank Green writes "A new kind of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell has been developed that can consume any kind of fuel, from hydrogen to bio-diesel; it is over two times more efficient than traditional generators. Acumentrics is attempting to market the technology to off-grid applications (like National Parks) and also for home use as personal Combined Heat and Power plants that are extremely efficient (half as carbon-intensive as grid power.)"
This thing costs $175,000. How much does a 5kW Diesel cost? Even with a 45% electrical efficiency it's going to take rather a long time to pay for itself. For cogeneration a Diesel is just as useful and yup, can also hit the 90% efficiency range.
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If technologies like this and cheap solar become commonplace, the model of the electrical grid that distributes power from one huge generator to a million consumers can be revised. I think that's good not only for carbon emissions, but for the losses due to transmission, the ugly high-tension wires crisscrossing the country, and the likelihood of outages. If we have a hundred thousand tiny generators on the grid, it seems like everyone wins except the power companies.
E pluribus unum
I still wonder about the costs of transporting the fuel. If you have to transport a couple hundred litres of fuel (I'm not sure on the amount) to each house every month, then is that more or less efficient than delivering truckloads of fuel to a single power plant. Obviously, it's easier to just truck it all to one place, but does it offset the efficiency lost from line transmission. Obviously it would still be a lot less connected and prone to failure, and there would be no high tension lines. However, I think that people may end up paying less if they had a choice (gas, coal, oil, hydrogen, biodeisel) as to who they bought their fuel supply from every month.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
... until Tom, Dick and Harry start patenting YOUR invention afterwards. And then battling it out in the courts with the deepest pocket winning and then preventing anyone from using that technology.
:)
No, the only possible course is this:
Found company "Example A limited" on the cheap, stock capital 1$. You are of course owner and CEO of that company, filing your patent with the USPTO. The sole purpose of this company is licensing this single patent, the only employee is you and its only asset is your invention.
Then found company "Example B limited". Same procedure, you are owner and CEO. The purpose of this company is producing useful merchandise from your invention, which is of course only licensed (for 1$/year) from company A.
If you have 300$ to burn, you could even create a small holding structure, with "Example holding limited" as the "root" node becoming the owner of company A and B, further protecting you against liability and lawsuit risks, which always arise when dealing with start-ups in fierce competition and a 2 ton gorilla in the market.
Whatever happens to company B doesn't affect A in any way under most circumstances (except for malice and severe negligence, I think). And as company A doesn't do anything other than holding a patent and licensing it to anyone who wants, it won't go down easily.
If the worst case happens and B goes bust, you could still license your patent through A on your terms, for 1$/year for everyone except BigOil Inc., who would have to pony up, say, half a billion per month. Your patent, your terms.
Sticking it to The Man for fun and profit. Behave responsibly
These are going to cost a pretty penny for a while, but I would be willing to invest if the cost of ownership and lifetime were reasonable. They are solid state, so they should last a while. Looking at the spec sheet, there is a sulfur filter that needs to be changed every 9000 hours. How much do those cost? Also, you need a quote to get warranty information. I wonder how much service costs? Can I learn to do it myself? A second life as a fuel cell technician would definitely be a refreshing change from a software engineer. Oh, and the operating range is 0-5000ft.
4 -cff857f5223f/Link.pdf 5 -920bb4d238a3/Link.pdf
The spec sheet: http://www.acumentrics.com/243ebdc5-db1f-410d-991
The home version: http://www.acumentrics.com/6d853cb3-92b2-46f3-b7f
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
By the way, from Acumentrics FAQ:
That means you can shut it down about 100 times. Any more shutdowns and you may start to damage your unit. So if your nighttime load is near zero, sorry unlike a diesel, no cutover to batteries. You gotta keep the generator hot. This is gonna adversely affect the efficiency of home use.--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Certainly in the UK, most houses have residential natural gas supplies for cooking and heating. I've been waiting for several years for a small residential combined heat-and-power boiler to become available so I could heat the house and generate electricity as a by-product. However all the companies I have investigated have been stuck at the 'we will be producing prototypes for you to install next month' stage for the last two years :-(
There is a huge difference between 12 hour run-time @ half usage and a 24/7 workhorse for remote locations that may see 1 person every 6 months. Assuming this is significantly more reliable than a system with far more moving parts you might be able to replace 2 30k generators with this and get more fuel efficiency.
So where 175k may be way over the top at 50k these could sell like hot cakes.
You'd only use such a generator when you want heat and not when you just want electricity. The rest of the time you'd use mains electricity.
You could have written a very similar story about the internal combustion engine. Working prototypes existed as early as the first decade of the 19th century, but still it took them 100 years to really catch on. And look where we are today.
Awareness of the coming energy crisis and our pernicious dependence on foreign oil has sparked an increase in R&D and general interest in alternative energy that is orders of magnitude higher than anything ever witnessed before. As this page demonstrates, yes, there has been sporadic research on SOFCs dating back to the 1930s, but all of it pales in comparison to the infusion of human and financial capital we're now seeing. The capitalist incentive to develop alternative energy never existed so long as oil was basically free, and of course miniscule amounts of government funding would never amount to much. But that was yesterday. This is the tipping point.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.