Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

Quote from Timar

IH wanted anything but a mature, commercially viable technology - rather something that indeed is "a billion dollars away from being a practical machine". Because this distance means control. Control by those who can invest such sums.

That is nonsense. It is not possible to develop major technology in the 21st century without spending billions of dollars. The regulatory hurdles alone demand that kind of money. That is why Toyota spent about $1 billion to develop the Prius. Compared to Rossi's device, the Prius is a minor incremental improvement to existing technology. Rossi's device would cost far more than this, although I.H. would only need to pay a small fraction of the total. Industrial corporations, national laboratories and others will have to spend tens of billions or hundreds of billions to make the device into a safe and practical source of energy.

The payback will be roughly $1 billion per day, so the cost will be trivial in comparison.

Comments such as Timar's reveal that he does not understand modern industry, research and development, or technology. This is not 1825 when you can roll out a radically new technology such as a railroad without years of testing & preparation to ensure safety. The public will not stand for that. Note that when the first railroad opened to the public in Britain, the locomotive ran over and killed one of the dignitaries because people were not even told they had stand out of the way, and the locomotive was travelling at an unprecedented speed (about 20 mph, I think).

Quote from SSC

I also disagree with Jed when he says "From a scientific or engineering point of view, there is no reason to make it 1-year. A few hours or a week would be better by far."
Rossi was testing a new technology, for which there is not even a theoretical explanation. How can you ask someone 89M dollars for a thing that you don't even know if it lasts for two weeks?

A 1-hour test conducted by any licensed HVAC engineer would have revealed that the machine was not producing any excess heat. The entire 1-year test was a waste of time, since it never worked in the first place. The data provided by Penon was nonsense and fraud, for the reasons described in Exhibit 5. I saw a sample of the data before the lawsuit began. I and others who saw it immediately realized it was nonsense. I am sure the data from Penon is accurately described by Exhibit 5, since Rossi himself quoted many of the same numbers in conversations with other people, including the conversation published by Lewan.

Of course if the machine had worked, longer tests would be necessary. They would have to be conducted in hundreds of laboratories such as UL, and at National and university laboratories, and industrial R&D laboratories. The physics of the machine will have be thoroughly understood. Thousands of machines will have to be tested before the first one can licensed for operation. This process will take years. The public will not stand for any unnecessary risk in the deployment of new technology such as self-driving cars or cold fusion. The public should not stand for that. Obviously, there will be accidents, and both cold fusion and self driving cars will kill people, but we must take every reasonable step to ensure that the number of people killed by these technologies will be far lower than the technologies they replace. This will cost a lot of money, but it will save more than it costs.

Quote from JedRothwell

They would have to be conducted in hundreds of laboratories such as UL, and at National and university laboratories, and industrial R&D laboratories.

Yes, it would have been much better for Rossi to test just one (or perhaps 3 or 4) kW units instead of all those small units to make 1MW. Send those individual units out to other labs for testing and verification. Good PR, good science, ....

My view is that IH, in entering the license agreement, was paying Rossi for rights to his technology. Initial payment was $11.5M. If however Rossi could demonstrate that the technology was commercial ready (or near commercial ready) -- that is it can produce at commercial levels (1MW) and be reliable enough for commercial use (1 Year with reasonable downtime) -- then the technology is mature and worth an additional $89M. So the requirement of a one year test at a 1MW level seems quite reasonable to me. This may have been overreach by Rossi but perhaps the only way Rossi could get IH to agree to the $89M price.

The GPT was to be the mechanism for showing this. That the GPT (and the rest of the license agreement) was so poorly defined is a another issue.

Happy New Year everyone and a big thanks to the moderators and contributors of this forum. Let's hope in the coming new year we finally get closure on the 'Rossi Effect.'

Peter Metz

Quote from Peter Metz

So the requirement of a one year test at a 1MW level seems quite reasonable to me. This may have been overreach by Rossi but perhaps the only way Rossi could get IH to agree to the $89M price.

I.H. did not think a 1-year test was reasonable, and neither did I. Rossi insisted on it.

Quote from Mary Yugo

I would only disagree that a very short test could prove the ecat real. You need enough time to rule out stored energy. In a small volume device, the 18 hour test of Levi's would be enough.

Let me clarify. A 1-hour test would show that the machine is not producing any heat. There would be no point to continuing to an 18-hour test, or a 1-year test. Perhaps Rossi could then fix the problem and produce excess heat for an hour. Then a longer test would be called for.

It would actually take longer than an hour to prepare for a conventional test. The HVAC engineer would first have to remove Rossi's instruments, change the plumbing, and install the correct type of instruments. This would take a few weeks I suppose. He would also have to have complete access to the fake customer site. I expect he would find nothing there but the 20 kW radiator shown in the photos. That would be additional proof that there was not 1 MW of heat, something we know already.

So IH was willing to pay $89M for less of a test?

Quote from JedRothwell

A 1-hour test conducted by any licensed HVAC engineer would have revealed that the machine was not producing any excess heat. The entire 1-year test was a waste of time, since it never worked in the first place.

According to the licence,the 1 year test was not the test meant to assess whether the machine was producing excess heat or not. The plant validation was supposed to have occurred with the $10 million test. It was a 24 hour test. IH decided they were satisfied with the plant and paid up. They were supposed to choose an ERV by mutual agreement with Rossi. They were allowed to have representatives present and discuss the results with the ERV. It seems they were satisfied enough with that test and paid.

Obviously you have the right to have doubts on the validation test.

But my point is that the 1 year test wasn't meant to valiadate the plant. It was meant to show that the plant could perform for 350 days out of 400 at a certain COP.

Of course in hindsight we now know that it was a waste a time from any point of view (whether it works or not).

Quote from Peter Metz

So IH was willing to pay $89M for less of a test?

If by "less of a test" you mean a shorter test with a smaller device, then yes, that is what they wanted. There is no benefit to testing for 1 year, or testing what is supposed to be a 1-MW device instead of, say, a 1-kW device. The longer duration and higher power does not make test more believable. Even if the machine had worked, it was clearly a crude prototype and not practical, so there was no point to demonstrating an ability to run for long periods. This is like trying to fly the Wright brother's 1911 Vin Fiz airplane from New York to California. That took 3 months, with 75 stops and 16 crashes.

The sensible thing to do was first demonstrate excess heat for an hour or so. Then show that heat continues past the limits of chemistry, which takes a few days or a week, depending on the mass of the machine and the level of heat. Then demonstrate that even the prototype can run for a few months. That would prove beyond doubt that it has commercial potential. Beyond that stage, development will have to be conducted by experienced industrial corporations, government agencies and others, as I described earlier. A comprehensive theory will be needed. The public will demand absolute assurance that the reactor does not -- and cannot -- produce dangerous radiation or radioactive materials before it can be used. Or, if it does produce radiation, then it can only be used in applications similar to today's fission reactors. That question has to be settled, and the entire physics establishment and engineering establishment has to agree to the answer before the first reactor is sold to anyone.

As I said, this is the 21st century. Society no longer allows inventors or corporations to wing it. The standards of the past were different. Society allowed far more serious hazards than it does today. When x-rays were first discovered, doctors killed some patients by overusing the x-rays, and Edison killed one of his collaborators. When radium was discovered, young women were hired to paint it onto wrist watches, which killed the women. Companies began marketing radium drinks to improve health and vitality, which killed the people who drank the stuff. In the 1940s and 50s many engineers urged automakers to install seat belts. It was clear that seat belts would save thousands of lives per year. The automakers refused, for reasons that seem incomprehensible today. I recall reading a technical paper from the 1950s that said there is no question seat belts work but the public would never stand for having them. That make no sense from the modern perspective. In the 1958 book by Teller and Latter "Our Nuclear Future," the authors said that we need above-ground nuclear tests, and they cause no more deaths per year than smoking cigarettes does, so no one should object. It is mind boggling that in 1958 people dismissed the death toll from smoking, but they did. (The approximate death rate from cigarettes was known long before the Surgeon General's 1964 report.)

The notion that Rossi can sit in his lab and develop an unknown form of nuclear energy into a market-ready device on his own is straight out of 19th century science fiction. Something that H.G. Wells might have described, like the time machine. It has no bearing on how R&D has actually been done for the last 100 years.

By the way, I am sure I.H. agrees with me about these issues.

Since 2017 will likely be the drama filled year Rossi is exposed, I've been thinking of immortalizing the event in a crowd-sourced musical, entitled: "The Wizard of Roz".

I've got some ideas for casting and one of the songs, but would welcome crowd-sourced help with following scenes and songs. I thought I'd share this seed on New Years Eve.

Opening scene to "The Wizard of Roz":
A 'tornado' of media buzz results in a mysterious shipping container in Italy spiraling into the sky and landing with a thump in North Carolina. There, Dorothy (played by Thomas Darden) and her dog Toto (JT Vaughn) attempt to get the shipping container to take them to the land of clean, cheap energy. However, after multiple failed attempts to get any energy out of the shipping container, they seek the counsel and advice of the container's designer, the Wizard of Roz (Andrea Rossi). An eccentric wizard, Roz tinkers and tinkers, but can't seem to get any energy out of the shipping container. Meanwhile, Dorothy gets on her bicycle with Toto in the basket, seeking others who can help pay for her trip to the land of clean, cheap energy.

Meanwhile, the wizard flies through the sky to visit the Witch of the South (played by Henry Johnson). Together, they develop a spell causing Dorothy to loose her faculties and agree to ship the container to be operated by the Wizard and Witch. After some time, Dorothy comes to her senses and realizes her error. Gathering her throng of helpers (Jones Day), they march down the road to the south, breaking into song:

We're off to sue the Wizard,
the fraudulant Wizard of Roz.
Because, because, because, because, because:
Because of the fraudulant things he does!
(Doo doo deh-doo doo deh-doot)

We're off to sue the Wizard,
the fraudulant Wizard of Roz!

Dorothy: Toto, I don't think we're in North Carolina any more.

(Happy New Year all!)

Quote from LENR Calender

According to the licence,the 1 year test was not the test meant to assess whether the machine was producing excess heat or not. The plant validation was supposed to have occurred with the $10 million test. It was a 24 hour test.

I do know anything about the $10 million test, so I cannot comment on it. There were severe problems with the 1-year test. I.H. complained about these problems from the start. The data I saw from it showed that the 1-year test was a farce and a fraud.

Quote from LENR Calender

Obviously you have the right to have doubts on the validation test.

I do not know a thing about it. Unless it was the Lugano test, in which case I know it was inadequate.

Quote from LENR Calender

But my point is that the 1 year test wasn't meant to valiadate the plant. It was meant to show that the plant could perform for 350 days out of 400 at a certain COP.

There was no rational reason to show that the plant can run for 350 days out of 400. Rossi wanted to do that. As I said, that is like proving you can fly a 1911 Wright airplane from New York to California. You can, but it takes 3 months, 75 stops, and 16 crashes, and you have to replace nearly every part of the machine by the time it gets there.

One part of the test that many seem to miss is that it was to start "immediately" not in some unlimited unknown length of time.
That is, the device should be ready for a long test in the "here and now" and not take some more unknown development.
There is a deference in technology that works today and that which may work in some future time.
Just ask the hot fusion people about that.

I find it interesting that Rossi is complaining (see Ecat World) that he has hundred of thousands of pages of documents to go through when it was he that made so many requests like:

REQUEST NO. 30: Any and all documents which support and/or pertain to your claim that “Neither IPH nor IH ‘engaged’ Mr. Penon to serve as the ERV for the Guaranteed Performance process....

REQUEST NO. 31: Any and all documents which support your position that “The project on which Leonardo is currently working cannot be the Guaranteed Performance process set forth in the Agreement”,

and on and on with requests for any and all documents xxxxx..

It is almost like he was glad to put a hardship on IH for all those things and it has boomeranged against him.

Quote from JedRothwell

The notion that Rossi can sit in his lab and develop an unknown form of nuclear energy into a market-ready device on his own is straight out of 19th century science fiction. Something that H.G. Wells might have described, like the time machine. It has no bearing on how R&D has actually been done for the last 100 years.

By the way, I am sure I.H. agrees with me about these issues.

And that is why we can't have nice things. And why tens of millions of children go hungry every day. And why the folks behind IH are not the right folks for the job.

Quote from IH Fanboy

And that is why we can't have nice things. And why tens of millions of children go hungry every day. And why the folks behind IH are not the right folks for the job.

You might want to rethink that. The primary IH people (Darden/Vaughn) have done a lot of benevolent 3ed world work. Including working for sustainable technology in Ethiopia, putting in wells, ......

IH may have benevolent intentions, although sometimes hard to tell. What I do know is that they were and are incapable of taking this technology to market. Jed seems to agree in a sense.

Nobody can bring to the market a technology that has no corporeal reality.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Nobody can bring to the market a technology that has no corporeal reality.

yes that is the real problem. I think that LENR is real but not ready for commercialization yet. A lot more study and understanding is needed.