Xref: utzoo sci.research:817 sci.space:10364 sci.environment:732 misc.headlines:7504 sci.misc:3348
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!apple!voder!blia!blic!miket
From: miket@blic.BLI.COM (Mike Tossy)
Newsgroups: sci.research,sci.space,sci.environment,misc.headlines,sci.misc
Subject: Re: Success with cold fusion reported
Message-ID: <1008@blic.BLI.COM>
Date: 30 Mar 89 18:40:34 GMT
References: <18213@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <3451@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu> <2183@cpoint.UUCP>
Organization: Britton Lee, Los Gatos, CA
Lines: 60

>>
>>I'm not sure that distributed energy production has anything intrinsically
>>going for it that centralized doesn't - basically the centralization is
>>a response to economics just like centralized food production (they call
>>them farms, meat packers, grain co-ops, etc.), centralized news media (I
>>suppose we COULD all do our own investigative reporting), centralized
>>traffic control (again - we could all get 4X4's and take off cross-country),
     
>Ok Bob, think for a second.  Energy production is not analogous to
>telecommunications OR food production.  The most important factor is
>the distribution loss (either I2 x R or thermal) that result from
>trying to produce energy in one location and move it to another.
>Producing energy locally would make us a much less energy intensive
>nation.  The only disadvantage to local energy production is that
>utilities don't make as much money. :-)

Seems to me that the distribution loss is not "the most important factor".
There are others.  As with today's fossil fuel plants, the cold fusion plants
may turn out to be more efficent at larger sizes.  The cost of the operations
staff  (unless you believe these cells can operated without staffing)
could make some centralization cost effective. Even if they can operate
unmanned then perhaps maintainance might still make for less expensive
centralized operation (it maybe cheaper to ship "cheap fusion power"
over an existing power grid than to move maintainance personnel from house to 
house).  Again depending upon the technology, it maybe cheaper to build
less capacity and use the existing powergrid to load balance than it would
be to build enough capacity for each site to meet its peak demand.  (My
house uses little energy during the day and my office uses little power
at night.  Today with centralized power production we can share the installed
power plant capacity - not so without a power grid.)

Other arguments are possible of course. An assembly line might produce 
standard units at a low enough cost as to make decentralization possible.
Or perhaps something in between, perhaps neighborhood power stations?

You can even envision that "advanced countries" like the U.S. would
adopt a centralized approach because of our existing power grid, while
"developing countries" might go for a distributed approach and avoid the
capital investment of building a power grid. (Look at railways, very few
developing countries find them cost effective to build, but most countries
that developed during the rail age find them cost effective to maintain.)

As always it is going to get down to economics (plus other social
considerations).  Unfortunately for those environmentalists who like to
snipe at utilities the truth is that utilities do perform a socally useful
function and that usefulness may very well continue even if cold fusion
works.

Final point: being "much less energy intensive nation" is not a "goodness"
in isolation.  There is nothing morally superior about using less energy, per
say.  The problem of energy use comes from the side effects that our
current energy production techniques.  Would you believe that using less
energy was good if all our energy was produced with alternative methods like
solar?  Reducing the cost of energy has been traditionally how societies
have increased the value of human labor, and I think that is a moral goodness.
I'm glad I live in a society of "mechanical slaves" instead of human ones.

--Mike Tossy

(No I don't work for a Utility.)