I don't understand why you don't think 'beach sand' is not a 'leap in cost/performance' over platinum.
Well, that depends on how much of the total system cost is represented by platinum. And lots of very expensive electronic components are made from beach sand too - it's an odd way to put it, so that does make me skeptical.
Is the inverter part of the box, are the wafers that make up the fuel cells more fragile due to the vastly cheaper materials?
I googled pure sine inverters, and units that didn't come close to powering a whole house were > $2,000. So I'm guessing the price does not include inverters. Or maybe they are counting on some form of 'net metering', and the unit really cannot power a whole house by itself, but would rely on the grid for peak power, and the box could produce an average amount of power? That bit of semantics would make a big difference. A $100 electric bill @ $0.10/KWHr is 1 MWHr, but divide by 30 days and 24 hours is 'just' 1,400 Watts on average. That's a reasonably sized inverter. But then this thing would not provide full-house power back up for me, so that lessens it's value from that viewpoint.
If I can pay 6K for two boxes to power my house for ever (with fuel cost at half assuming it is twice as efficient) AWESOME.
mmmm, maybe. Remember, he said half the fuel cost of 'traditional' ... something or another (I'm not going to go back and listen again, I wish they had a transcript). From an economic decision, I just care what a KWHr is going to cost me versus buying from the Utility company, that's the bottom line, not some maybe-not-apples-to-apples comparison.
Plus, outside my monthly 'connection fee', when I buy a KWHr, that's it. It includes the infrastructure cost. Here, you are owning the infrastructure, and (as you point out), repair & maintenance.
Fuel cells don't require natural gas. They can run off of hydrogen ...
And the most cost effective place to get hydrogen today is from Natural Gas. If you are going to make it with water and electricity, let's just skip the middle-man and all the inefficiencies and just use the electricity directly.
We don't know if the $100,000 savings includes carry costs. You assume it doesn't. (What bank is giving 5% interest? Tell us more.)
No, we don't know for sure. That's the problem with these kind of presentations, and the devil is in the details. But as they seem to be leave out a lot of details, I'm betting that they left that little 'carrying cost' detail out also. It is left out of most of the justifications I have seen for 'green energy' items. And corporate bonds are getting ~ 5% interest, so unless a company has cash sitting around in a bank (with shareholders wondering why they aren't putting the money to work in their business), they will be paying 5% or so for this infrastructure - so it does play into the cost analysis.
But maybe the smoke and mirrors will be lifted tomorrow. After all, these things were being considered 10 years ago, so with some good improvements they might be feasible. And if it's an average 1400 Watt unit, rather than a peak 24,000 Watt unit, payback could be reasonable.
-ERD50
