Futurist Thomas Frey Reveals New Details of Breakthrough Energy Technologies
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star0 15 weeks ago
star0 15 weeks ago On Wednesday I was invited to speak on a panel at the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in Washington DC.
In the audience were a thousand power industry executives, regulators, and key industry service providers.
The event was kicked off by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our panel took the stage immediately afterward.
4 Comments
darn close:
I was pretty darn close on one of the technologies he revealed (I guessed, based on hints that he gave) in the following article of mine:
http://www.evolver.net/user/star0/blog/coming_energy_revolution
The breakthrough tech he mentioned, though, turned out to be even simpler!
I'm still curious about that other technology he refers to. YES, these next few years are going to be a bumpy ride, indeed! Expect heavy turbulence as we transition from a world of scarcity to a world of extreme abundance.
ok, let's think about it:
Ok, let's think about what Frey said about the OTHER technology that he can't talk about due to NDA:
1. The technology fits inside a box that one places OUTSIDE the house. Why outside, specificallyl?
2. It apparently can store the energy up that is not used. That makes it sound like it maybe NEEDS to store up unused energy -- i.e. it can't collect energy all the time.
3. It has no external inputs like water, natural gas, geothermal. But that could still leave air.
4. Whatever energy source it uses, it must be fairly energy-dense, as one not-so-large box can power three houses.
5. The technology is incredibly elegant and simple.
6. It doesn't involve weird fantasy technologies like Tesla devices, zero-point energy, and probably LENR.
Ok so what could that be? I have conjectures I want to share:
1. One possibility is that it is a device for simply pulling hydrogen gas directly out of the air, perhaps using a semi-permeable membrane of some sort. The idea is air naturally contains trace amounts of hydrogen gas... and so if one could just find a way to separate it from the oxygen, nitrogen, argon, etc., then one would have a viable fuel source... I think, anyhow. Actually, I'd have to run the numbers to see whether there is enough of it in the air for this idea to have a chance of succeeding -- I know the concentration is small, but maybe it isn't too small.
2. Another possibility would be to somehow extract energy from water vapor. It turns out that humid air is full of crackling electrical energy, and that such energy is what gives rise to lightning. If only there were a way to pull this energy out of the air...
3. There is a natural cycle of the world's plants producing O2 and taking in CO2 during the day, while doing the opposite at night. And I think during the year the percentages can change a lot, depending on the season (wasn't that mentioned in An Inconvenient Truth ?). In principle one SHOULD be able to extract energy from this partial pressure difference... though I am not sure how much it would add up to.
4. There's always the chance that the technology is, in fact, some kind of low-grade, safe nuclear reactor... where the device would use the difference in temperature between the core and the outside to produce electricity -- e.g. low-grade nuclear would work very well with the "thermoelectric" technology discussed in Frey's article.
Could be a flywheel
Could be a flywheel in a vacuum bottle, or that solar cell that converts water to stable O2 and H2. But I agree the next couple of years are going to be make or break for energy technologies.
Of course what we need are more conservation technologies and incentives to use less power, and do more with less. Anathema to consumer culture, but it's the easiest thing to do...kind of...as I type on my computer...with lights on....and the dryer going.
Ok I'd like to know more about that magic box thing!
6 Tektite Serpent
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"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly" - Thomas Paine
"We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing" - Seneca
Ideas are the ammunition of the Occupation!
Possible:
It's possible that flywheels are used for the storage of electricity; but it doesn't seem likely they would be used for the generation -- unless they somehow work on the earth's rotation, tidal force energy, or earth's magnetic field... none of which could supply enough energy to get it spinning fast enough to power a home.
Whatever the tech is, I hope it becomes available soon!