The United States government is trying to develop independence from the traditional power grid. According to the State of the Union Address presented by President Obama in January of this year, he seems to expect the military to develop its own energy generation so that it will no longer have to depend on traditional forms of fuel and power.
Each of the different branches of the military is expected to find billions of dollars in private funding to build renewable resource power plants. The reason given for requiring private funding is that tax incentives are made available to private developers, while government entities don’t get those tax incentives. According to an article in Reuters, it is expected that between the branches of the military, $20 billion dollars in private funding will be necessary.
The only restriction is that traditional fossil fuels are not part of the plan. One administration official was quoted by Reuters as saying that the U.S. has lost thousands of soldiers in Iraq and in Afghanistan over the last decade simply because of the need to protect fuel.
The U.S. Army will start studying how to use hybrid engines in combat vehicles. The U.S. Energy Department has launched a competition to encourage the development of better batteries for the purpose of storing energy. This $30 million dollar competition is being paid for by the taxpayers.
In the meantime, Andrea Rossi is developing 1MW power plants that fit in a shipping container. These power plants use cold fusion to generate enough power for building complexes. In addition, they can be added to and expanded, as the power plant is actually a collection of individual fusion units. Each of the units can be stacked and linked together.
Singly, these power units can provide power for a house. Rossi says they are glorified water heaters – that can produce steam. And, steam is the generator for most energy.
While vehicle E-Cat machines are, according to Rossi, 20 years away, the military installations could be powered by E-Cat units, saving money on expensive solar and wind power applications. By simply “plugging in” to E-Cat power plants, the President’s call to remove the military from the power grids across the world could be made a reality.
Roger Bird
May 11, 2012
The 800 pound gorilla with a very bad attitude in the room regarding the power grid is solar flares and deliberate EMPs from those who have decided to be our enemies. These risks are real and could instantly set us back to 1859 technological level. Since we have grown accustomed to 2012 technology, 100 million Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans would die, if not more. And millions more would die in other countries.
So, getting rid of the grid would be a very important valuable thing to do. This would not fix the additional problem that solar flares and EMPs present to micro-circuits, like cellphones and any other unprotected integrated circuit. More needs to be done.
administrator
May 13, 2012
Good point.
GreenWin
May 18, 2012
Roger makes good sense from a security standpoint. In fact we see the military is VERY interested in LENR from many points of view. But they are likely opposed by the oil&gas, coal, fission energy corporations.
As for grids – we need to rethink them to smaller scale. With distributed energy each residence can generate their own heat and electricity. But local “district” or neighborhood micro-grids will provide valuable community resources and backup services. A micro-grid connects LENR appliances together like a local area network. If one neighbor’s appliance goes down – the micro-grid provides instant backup power. And the micro-grid supplies totally free energy to community schools, rec centers, municipal buildings and non-profit orgs.
Difference is there is no central generating plant. And we can dismantle the 660 thousand MILES of transmission wires and cables that cut swaths across our cities and towns. Not to mention returning hundreds of dammed rivers to their natural appearance. Grids get downsized and service community in the LENR world.
They do not function as totalitarian control mechanisms for old school energy cartels.