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Non-Tech : Bill Wexler's Dog Pound -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (1421)	6/19/1999 9:38:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Respond to of 10293

Sid, sorry for the inverter/converter mix up. Actually, inverters are made of mostly semiconductors, and $4000 seems rich to me for 7 Kw, nevertheless it will not be "cheap". As far as I know, GE has not put enough money in PP to get it to the point of demonstrating a low cost approach. There are also some serious discussions that a high temperature FC (with Zirconia electrolytes by GLE) is making some progress. As far as I am concerned, right now (and for the last 20 years) the FC technology is still just that a developing technology. Zeev

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (1421)	6/23/1999 1:16:00 PM
From: Marconi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10293

[OT] Hello Mr. Turtlman: inverters I am dated by 10 years in my inverter technology, but $4K sounds a little pricey for a home inverter. There is considerable economy in inverters by providing dirty power and less efficiency. But that can shorten the life of power devices like motors and kill solid state electronics by a spike. To get very clean power (no messy voltage transients , spikes, digital-like noise) costs more and to gain the highest efficiencies can raise costs more steeply. If I recall the traditional way of cleaning inverted power was to use bulky components like capacitors and other circuit components similar to transformers. If such bulky components can be replaced now by solid state devices, and there has been wonderful progress in the last 10-20 years in making higher current, higher voltage, higher efficiency power transistors with lesser transients, then the de-bulking effect of that could bring inverter prices down considerably--my guess largely in ignorance would be say to 1/3 of what they were 10 years ago. Still clean multiples of KW's are not going to be cheap. I would think more than $1K. There used to be a free trade journal called either Powermation or Power and Control News, that was decent at describing recent developments and their ramifications. There were also a lot of 'bingo card' opportunities to obtain further information. If you are interested, please send me a PM and I will see if I can find a copy of that publication through a colleague and let you know. I hope this helps. There is a lot of decent information available in that industry--it remains a long talked about target, but has not taken off. The infrastructure for electrical distribution that was jumpstarted decades ago by cross-subsidies also occurred in natural gas distribution by cross-subsidies years ago, too. The gas distribution infrastructure did not go a far as the electrical infrastructure, though. Natural resource distribution (NG) is more limited than derived product distribution (E). The rub is that NG is one of the cheapest clean bulk fuels for fuel cells. The main synergy is along the lines of home cogeneration--take NG to convert to premium energy, E, and use the waste heat from the conversion for space heating (or air conditioning). Best regards, m