Well, it looks like after the year and then the months, we’re down into the days until the Big eCat Announcement… or the Next Tease…
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/03/29/e-cat-1mw-plant-test-results-watch-thread/
ERV is the external reviewer of the 1 year eCat test, I think ;-)
JONP is the Journal Of Nuclear Physics – Rossi’s web site.
It looks like the review is all written up and at least a summary of it that pleases Rossi is going to be made public inside 10 days.
UPDATE #4
Andrea Rossi has provided a bit of a profile of the ERV:
Rex
March 29, 2016 at 10:58 PM
Dr Andrea Rossi:
Can you give us the characteristics of the ERV ?1- age AR: around 50- 55
2- education: AR: Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering
3- professional experience AR: Nuclear Power Plants
4- has also due experience in certification of plants? AR: yes
5- who paid his work and all his expenses ? AR: fifty-fifty Leonardo Corporation and Industrial HeatThank you if you can answer,
Regards
RexUPDATE #3
Andrea Rossi made this announcement on the Journal of Nuclear Physics Today:
Andrea Rossi
March 29, 2016 at 1:44 PM
DEAR READERS:
WE HAVE RECEIVED RIGHT NOW THE ERV’S REPORT WHICH HAS BEEN DELIVERED TO INDUSTRIAL HEAT AND TO MYSELF.
While I cannot release the report publicaly at this time, I can state that I am very pleased with the results.
I hope that Industrial Heat and I will be able to release the report publicaly in the near future.
May God help us for the hard work waiting for us all.
Warm Regards,
Dr Andrea Rossi, CEO of Leonardo CorporationWe’ll only have to wait 10 days max according to Andrea Rossi on the JONP:
gregha
March 29, 2016 at 2:18 PM
If not a full release of the ERV report, how about a synopsis?Andrea Rossi
March 29, 2016 at 4:12 PM
Gregha:
Yes, I will publish it within a tenth of days, anyway.
Warm Regards,
A.R.
So before “Tax Day” is the target range…
Either this will be one giant Yawn as Yet Another Non-Evidence happens, or the world will undergo a large shift.
FWIW, there are a couple of other pages on that first link asking internesting questions, like how do you roll out that big an economic change to the world, and how do Governments handle this as they tax the hell out of energy at present.
IMHO they tend a bit too much to paranoia and concern, both in the articles and more so in the comments. Despite the assertion that nothing so radical has happened before, it has happened many times. Horses to motor cars. The onset of the Steam Age. Computers revolutionizing all things computational and word related. The post W.W.II exodus from ocean liners and trains and into airplanes. (At least in the USA, passenger trains were only saved as rolling museum pieces, really, until the latest Green Surge; while ships are now floating amusement parks). Gutenberg and movable type. (How many scribes do you know today? How many teamsters that actually work a horse team? etc. etc.)
In reality, it takes a few years for folks to “get with it”. I was something of a ‘late adopter’ of digital cameras. Try to find film today at Walmart. 2 speeds and about a dozen rolls. A decade back it was sold by the pallet in COSTCO. Yet I was about 5 years waiting to get my first one.
So while some folks are saying how this will decimate oil as everyone runs to the cheaper power source, I look at the problem of “fleet change” and see a decade just to replace the cars if we were already making and selling eCat based ones. Now add in the 5 to 10 years to design, safety test and certify, convert factories and assemble / ship… It will be 20 years before gasoline is getting low demand. Even then, it will be around and demanded. Ships, trains, and trucks last even longer and have a longer fleet change profile.
Buildings and boilers? Homes and water heaters? A similar long cycle. First samples have to be made and shipped. That means you need a factory and facilities and staff and… Now Rossi claims to have some of that ready to rapid start.
So I could easily see him selling a 1 MW plant a week for a while since folks can see the report on this one, and maybe even tour it. BUT, the world has millions of such heater installations. 52/1,000,000 is a small fraction per year.
For the home units (combined heat and power) we’re talking maybe a global demand of about 1 Billion? At 1 million / year that takes 1000 years… And it will start at closer to 1000 a year.
The simple fact is that it takes a long time for folks to pay attention, hear from friends, become comfortable with the new idea, save up money to buy it, wait for the old one that’s all paid for to wear out, etc. etc.
So what for Rossi is a “warship” of capacity is nearly nothing to the world.
Even if folks embraced it intensely from day one and ran hell bent for leather at it, you are staring a decade or two in the face. It would take that long just to build all the factories, source all the materials, get all the global regulatory approvals, hire sales staff, etc. etc. on down to all those installers.
So I’m not seeing anything dire for the global economy out of this. (Assuming it is real). Just the usual “disruptive technology” cycle of an industry being routed over the course of a decade. High prices initially as the competition sets the price (i.e. if you make energy 1/10 the price of oil, you can sell for 1/2 the price of oil and make a very nice profit), price slowly coming down as capacity to deliver product increases until eventually you reach a ‘shake out’ phase 1/4 century out.
Per taxes: Governments find a way to tax anything. From making it a property tax uplift to just putting a ‘tax meter’ on it and collecting what they now get from electricity and gas, but from you not the power company, to just putting a big tax on any old thing they feel like taxing. Maybe one late night session of the legislature and the dream of tax free energy goes POOFF! I’m not worried that government will be unable to make more taxes…
In Conclusion
Once again we are left with “hope”. “But hope is not a strategy. -E.M.Smith”; and I’d add neither is a crystal ball.
But at least we’re down to the days range. Fish or cut bait time fast approaches.
My expectation is that we’ll get a letter from Leonardo Corp saying “everything was fine per the reviewer. Here’s some selected quotes.” And we can all go back to grumbling. It would be great to have a press conference and the “user” say “It was us, we’re very happy, ordered 2 more, and tours starting next month, $10 a head.” Don’t expect it though.
It will be very interesting to watch oil markets and selected national currencies in the next month…
Musings from the Chiefio 
There is no competent theory on how an e-cat might work. None of the expected results can be justified by known particle interactions. The residues do not match any theory. Rossi has sometimes stated the reaction is nuclear. When people said that such a reaction would require NRC regulation, Rossi backed off.
If it worked and was economical Rossi could make a fortune just selling industrial water boilers. He has not. He is instead looking for investors. And Rossi was once convicted of being a scam artist.
And Tesla’s “infinite energy”? Any first year EE knows more about RLC circuits than Tesla did. I have read Tesla’s books on the subject. They are full of errors. Surprising for a guy who was good enough at math to devise our AC power system.
ERV = “Expert Responsible for Validation” (for example, here: https://animpossibleinvention.com/2016/03/10/industrial-heat-makes-announcement/ )
M Simon says: 30 March 2016 at 8:22 am
Did you read E M’s last 2 posts on lenr & lanr?
The trouble with Rossi is that if he were a scammer, what would he be doing differently? NONE of the tests have been clear and conclusive, and it’s easy to do a conclusive test- mount the hardware on a pallet with its own heat engine to create whatever electrical power it needs to keep running, hand it to the auditor who hangs it from a couple insulating cords, and run the damn thing for two weeks. No power cords, just some simple calorimetry with a fan, flow sensor, and temperature measurements in and out. That Rossi has never allowed such a test screams of deceit.
Below is a pdf file of the message sent to the UN Secretary General, Presidents of the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society, and the Editor of Nature earlier today:
Click to access Ethics_and_Human_Rights_in_the_Scientific_Revolution.pdf
The intent is to remove any doubt about the intentions of these holders of high offices.
I have a bad feeling about Industrial Heat. It appears to me that they may have used Rossi and his E-cat to raise over $11million and will now pull the plug on him and move on…:-(…pg
@p.g.sharrow
Being as Cherokee Investment Partners manages about $400 million (cf. http://investment-advisors.credio.com/l/39427/Cherokee-Investment-Partners-LLC ) I don’t think that they’d bother with raising $11 million with the plan aforethought of repurposing it.
I think the principals of Industrial Heat (Darden and Vaughn) have good track records, so if Rossi has a “there” there I believe that they will pursue it. At the least, I expect that Rossi/Leonardo is in line for a significant payday upon an ERV report showing his technology to be fit for purpose.
Rossi himself writes that the ERV report has speeded up his path to industrialization (cf. http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/03/29/e-cat-1mw-plant-test-results-watch-thread/#comment-2597400111 )
@rocketplumber
I think that the Lugano test fits within what you state Rossi has not allowed – noting that I lay the criticisms of the calorimetry at the feet of the testers, not Rossi.
@Brent Buckner; Thank you for your links. You have prodded me into updating myself on the current affairs of the Ecat saga. I have been kind of ignoring this for the last 2 years. As a tinker/inventor I find Rossi a kindred spirit, someone I understand. I am also well acquainted with the kind of people that prey on the creators. After 50 years of of this, my spider sense is tingling. I smell a rat, actually a nest of them.
Rossi also has played this game before and I see signs that he has been doing some sandbagging to protect his own position. By luck or design, Rossi has given us a glimpse into a new technology as well as a better understanding of the physics of the world around us. This will endure regardless of the outcome of his connection to the Cherokee/Industrial heat people.
We live in interesting times…pg
Be really neat if I am wrong, and the thing can make energy for peanuts. With all the crow I’ve been eating lately, seems I’ve developed a taste for it.
As I said four or five years ago this is great fun as long as you have not been fooled into investing in ECW (E-Cat World). I am with “rocketplumber”.
This story of people leaving CA for TX may interest you:
using IRS migration data
“. . . over 250,000 California residents moved out of the state between 2013 and 2014, the latest period for which data was available. The tax returns reported more than $21 billion in adjusted gross income to the IRS.”
Followed the Rossi saga pretty closely for 5 years. Looked through each successive demo in series and helped (with others) figure out why the calorimetry was untrustworthy, forever dramatically changing tacks rather than ironing out errors, and at claimed outputs calorimetry is ridiculously easy. Industrial Heat are now apparently backing away from him too. At this point after all his delaying tactics and no convincing demos (And some very dodgy statements and actions) I don’t think there are any reasonable hope left that he is for real.
Which is not to say that I don’t still have some hope that LENR is real, but requires a suspiciously large number of miracles (ignitable, controllable, no significant radiation or radioactive isotopes made, eV lattice bond energies/’stiffnesses’ overcoming keV coulomb barriers for fusion, occurring in many metals (Pd, Ni, Ti in various reports) under different conditions, sold phase, liquid phase, with different gases (deuterium, protium, Lithium).
More likely the whole field is wishful thinking and poor estimation of measurement errors. It rewards sloppy behaviour (the worse you experimental techniques, the more likely you will see positive results, perhaps why so many ‘results’ come from hobbiests with poor equipment)
EMS, I largely agree with what you wrote, it will take longer than most suppose. I differ on things like trains and ships, where the energy consumption would justify modification. Rossi is already working on a Quark powered gas turbine. If Rossi builds a good automated line to make E-Cat Quark Xs and assemble them into larger units, it would not take long to duplicate such lines to meet demand.
M.Simon is wrong (and libelous) claiming Rossi was convicted of fraud. He wasn’t.
It would be easy to set up a scientific test to determine the COP of the E-Cat. What writers about this miss is that it is not in IH or Rossi’s business interest to do so. They would prefer to keep the competition guessing until they have set up production.
@ Andrian, Popular Science called Rossi a “convicted scam artist.” https://web.archive.org/web/20140128085542/http://www.popsci.com/article/science/dubious-cold-fusion-machine-acquired-north-carolina-company
It is not libelous to accuse someone of something if it is true.
`According to wikipedia his convictions were for tax fraud and environmental crimes rather than for direct fraud upon his investors.
And, IIRC, Rossi claimed the “environmental crime” was a trumped up thing by those who wanted him out of business as he was poaching on their approved turf, and the “taxes” were the mechanism of the destruction as they were assessed on some kind of retroactive basis on that “environmental crime”… I probably ought to look up the actual story as I’m sure that “thumbnail” is not accurate… but “close enough” for what I cared about at the time ;-)
In short, when you look into it, it isn’t just your typical Ponzi Scheme and has a whole lot of intrigue and loose ends… and in Italy such things often have “interesting connections” on the “official” side too… So I’m in the “withholding judgement as I don’t see where I’ll ever have enough info to make a rational decision” group.
Waiting for the 1st generation, 10 Kw residential co-generation units, slated for lease in the second half of 2017. Similar to off-grid residential solar, but on-demand power 24/7, without requiring a battery bank.
Noticed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is speaking of a divestment of oil holdings beginning as early as 2017—coincidence?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-01/saudi-arabia-plans-2-trillion-megafund-to-dwarf-all-its-rivals
Click to access BrLP-Business-Presentation-032916.pdf
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/04/06/cold-fusion-lenr-verified-inventor-sues-industrial-heat-llc-press-release/
@Sera; Thank you for that link.
What I feared looks to be happening. Industrial Heat is now starting a “roll up” to squeeze out Rossi and take control of his IP. This happens more often then you might realize. Most really NEW technology inventions encounter these predators. This is about the BIGGEST invention of the 21st Century! This could lock up any real commercial use of Rossi’s inventions by him, for a very long time. IH will now counter sue, claim that Rossi is in violation of their contract, they owe him no money, he owes them a full refund of any money advances plus damages. Then they will offer to settle for all the IP involved and promise to bankrupt Rossi with their deep pocket court actions if he refuses. It is called “the Golden Rule” of “Smart” business. Use the threat of money to take control of unrealized wealth created by others. Independent Inventors are a prime target of these people.
From what I can see, Rossi is no fool and has “sand bagged” his position fairly well. Initiated legal action for their non payment is the start. Now we shall soon see how well he has prepared for their counter actions…pg
From the link in the link (to save folks clicking…)
Looks to me like “the usual” where a company tries to get as much “lock” on Intellectual Property as possible (patents, trade secrets, etc. etc.) and buy up (“roll up”) other weaker competitors and their IP (even if it’s a potentially conflicting claim).. This happens A LOT in Silicon Valley. Companies build a large patent library just for the purpose of tactical and strategic suit defense.
So you sue me for infringing your patent on, oh, “a method of using bits to control file access”, and I go through your code with a fine tooth comb and find it violates my patent on “a method of programming with virtual registers” (or whatever…) and offer to “settle” both suits by mutual cross licencing… Everybody goes home and the lawyers cash their checks. And we then BOTH go sue everyone else for both patents…
Frankly, I find it very encouraging that:
1) Industrial Heat is doing a “roll up” and “IP harvesting”. That’s in many ways THE best evidence that that darned thing actually works. You don’t go tossing $Millions at worthless crap patents on something that doesn’t work at all.
2) Leonardo is suing them. Yeah, yeah… don’t want to food fight inside the “home team”, but… you don’t go filing all sorts of suits with things subject to “discovery” and all if you are running a scam. It is inviting a close inspection by people with law degrees, guns, and subpoenas…
I’ve not read the grounds yet, but I’d guess that IH has done a patent buy that “infringes” on Leonardo’s IP (by claiming ownership of Ni H or similar) and Rossi is now fighting to keep ownership rights in his invention (i.e. NOT need to pay IH a “license” fee to use his own tech).
Hopefully, this is the first of a 1/2 dozen such suits. It will eventually need to happen, so might as well get it out of the way sooner rather than later. It would also be a great starting gun to wake up everyone else to the idea that there is real value here…
FWIW, that NAVSEA patent is extraordinarily broad and covers just about all the H or D in various metals approaches. As it is a 2007 patent, it’s early in the claims / queue. I’m also pretty sure that The Navy can’t outright SELL the patent, but instead licenses it to all sorts of users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States
says
Note that it is from filing date, and that it is the earliest of the U.S. or international patent filed. So at worst case, in 2027 it’s expired, though I suspect that some of the overseas patents predate that and the filing will have been earlier so we might be looking at something more like 2020 ish. That’s all of 4 years away. By the time any suits and counter suits clear the court system, it will likely have been mooted by expiration of “prior art” filings.
It will take a few years just to get sales and production ramped up in any case. So I’m not so much concerned about the technology being “buried”; it is out there “in the wild” now and patents were issued a while back both in the USA and EU, along with some in Japan, so the timers are all running. The bigger question is how this might impact Leonardo and their sales / build out attempt. IFF they have anything like a decent license agreement with I.H., their sales would still generate a nice revenue stream to Leonardo…
So the independent validation is highly positive. I’ll be very happy when the end user is identified, but for now, having the validation and validator known, and having the claim in the context of a lawyer acting in suit using it, well, it’s hard to get a lawyer to put their licence behind a flat out fraudulent claim.
At this point, I’d give it about 75% to 85% odds of being real and as advertised.
Guess it’s time for a bit more searching on what has been stated and released publicly. I.e. things like press conferences, eye witness testimonies, etc. etc.
@Sera: Thanks for the “wake up call” to do a follow up search. ;-)
Interesting bit here, quoted from court docs (also linked as pdfs to download):
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/04/06/complaint-of-andrea-rossi-and-leonardo-corp-court-document-cop-substantially-greater-than-fifty-50-during-test/
An interesting comment from here:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/04/07/andrea-rossi-goes-to-court-what-happens-to-the-e-cat-now/
So the basic thrust of the suit looks to be 2 fold.
1) Pay the outstanding $89 Million.
2) Rights do not extend to companies outside of IH control.
The comment makes a couple of interesting points about non-payment by IH voiding their contract rights… and Rossi being “allowed” to publish actual performance via suing IH when they might have been prevented from “leaking” the independent review by confidentiality agreements otherwise…
Looks like Rossi is playing an interesting long game here…
Ah, here in the filing is the “knife” being used against Rossi:
So not just buying up other patents, but trying to file patent claims on Rossi’s stuff.
Rossi is still able to make /sell whatever he wants outside the USA (as this dispute is over US licensed use) and mostly just needs the money to build. Worst case is someone else ponies up some seed capital for him. IFF the device is clearly proven to work, that ought not be too hard.
Darden et. al. look to be trying to ‘horn in’ on his ROW turf via that Netherlands INTERNATIONAL sub company and / or block him with patents on his own stuff. By firing the first slavo, Rossi has made that a bit harder…
The way things like this usually run in Silicon Valley is that everybody keeps on making and selling and only “settles up” the money due at the end of the court case. IFF this follows that pattern, both of them ought to be making e-Cats pretty quickly (though Rossi with an added funding hurdle to get replacement capital) even as the court case runs. (Modulo any injunctions anyone gets…)
In any case, Rossi can now release the Independent Report without the IH “sign off” via the expedient of making it a court filing… Nicely done.
Of course, we ought to also get a passel of amicus briefs from various other parties with other patents (NAVSEA and the folks in Europe with patents) claiming their patents take precedent.
My you live in interesting times… I think I need a bigger bag of chips, dip, and beverages… ;-) .
Wow… From the licence agreement:
So an all up cost of $101 for a built and fueled reactor good for at least 1/2 a year, maybe a year, per kW. Call it 5050 hours, that’s $101 / 5050 $/kW-hr or 2 ¢ / kW-hr of thermal energy.
Section 13.3 is a non-compete clause so Darden et. al. are theoretically not able to compete with Rossi (last lines) for 2 years after the agreement is terminated. That would give Rossi a 2 year run if the agreement is terminated during which time Darden is blocked.
Section 13.4 says that the quark and related new developments are incorporated into the agreement… So I wonder if Rossi is trying to get it terminated so he has 100% of that new IP?…
Exhibit A is interesting in that it lists the IP and says the manufacture, operation, and control systems are in, but does not specifically call out the fuel mix…
Then there’s a list of patents and patents pending included (mostly pending / filed). I note the first one is an Italian granted patent, so it sets the date on the timer… I found #8 to be particularly interesting so bolded it.
Schedule 3.2b specifically states that Rossi doesn’t need to hand over the Catalyzer Formula at the start of the acceptance test. Likely that was his “hole card” and the published formulas for reproduction made that less protective, thus Darden and friends feeling OK to push the envelope. They already had everything other than that formula. Further down it states that when paid the $10 Million he DID have to hand it over, so Darden ought to have the whole kit now. Leaving Rossii little to push against for the remaining $89 Million.
There is also a list of 11 other licencees scattered around the EU and a few other odd areas, so some of them ought to be clear to run to manufacturing starting, well, now.
The agreement is a little bit tilted in Darden et. al. favor, but mostly seems symmetric. At this point, I can see reasons why both might want to terminate it. Rossi to get ROW rights back and be free of handing over new tech developments; IH so they can run rampant over the world with a giant money vacuum… and cut out Rossi. Both would be better served with just sticking to it, IMHO. In any case, looks like the tech is going to be made, widely, and the lawyers will be rich.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/07/e-cat-crumbles-industrial-heat-has-worked-for-over-three-years-to-substantiate-the-results-without-success/
Having read some of the initial comments on the wuwt article last night, I’m more inclined to believe the tenor of the discussion here…
The comments on the Ecat site include some replies quoted from Rossi, including a statement that he has something like 18 volumes of documented meeting and replications with IH including “recordings”. It seems to me he was being “appropriately paranoid”. As a sysadmin, I’m very familiar with that awareness…
IF he really has video and audio on some of the successes, this could get real interesting.
For now, for me, the smoking gun is that IH have filed patents claiming THEIR engineer as coinventor. Their claim is that, in essence, “It works, but we own it not Rossi because our guy helped”. They are out raising money based on it working (in the end). So both say it is now working, but fighting over the IP ownership. The suit was also moved to a patent court, supporting that POV.
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