I haven't the slightest idea. But it is not a good sign.
I cannot make head or tail of his present experiments. His early ones at Thermacore were much simpler. They looked like cold fusion, so I assumed they were cold fusion, only with Ni instead of Pd.
Jed, you wrote a book on cold fusion and you are confused. How much work did you put into this? You know, this is a big deal.
Apparently some people need to be spoon fed. There are 100 papers on the subject - since there is no standard LENR theory - but the hydrino theory has passed more independent tests than any LENR experiment in history, perhaps it is time to take a look. This isn't going away so you either learn it now or later.
This simple paper by Dr. Philips professor at the Naval Postgraduate School - and ex-Los Alamos scientist is pretty clear - a novel chemical energy process exists. Anyone can reproduce this and I know many who have at many universities. https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0401/0401132.pdf