We’ve had months of prognostication now about how and when the results of Andrea Rossi’s 1MW E-Cat test might get released, but I don’t think anyone predicted that the news would come in a press release announcing a court case.
For years now people have been speculating about the relationship between Andrea Rossi/Leonardo Corporation and Industrial Heat — trying to understand the legal and working relationship between the two entities. The court documents connected with the legal action taken by Rossi against Industrial Heat have given us much more information than we have ever known. I certainly never expected to be able to know so much about the inner details of the relationship, except maybe far into the future when a history of this affair was written.
Someone asked me yesterday for an analysis of the situation. Honestly I don’t know if I can add anything new to the hundreds of comments that have been posted since yesterday afternoon. There is much speculation about motives and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, but personally I am still trying to digest this highly unexpected situation.
To me the most important question in all of this is what happens to the E-Cat now? The reason I have been following this story for so long is not because of the personalities or business dealings involved — it’s because we are dealing with a technology that has the potential to benefit the world in a profound way.
At the heart of the story is still Andrea Rossi and his invention. Rossi’s complaint revealed yesterday makes extraordinary claims about what the E-Cat can do. To me, the key phrase from the document is “By all accounts, the amount of energy produced by the E-Cat Unit during the Guaranteed Performance Test was substantially greater than fifty (50) times the amount of energy consumed by the E-Cat Unit during the same period.”
Taken at face value, this means that the overall COP obtained during the test was over 50 — which is on the high end of what many people were expecting. If this is accurate then Rossi’s invention is really doing the impossible, and it is one of the most significant inventions in human history, with the potential to alleviate so many of our energy-related problems.
But we are still at the pre-production, R&D stage. To be useful to the human race, the E-Cat must be released into the real world to do real work. What are its prospects now?
I have no doubt about the determination and commitment of Andrea Rossi to bring his product to market. But determination alone can’t do it. He needs funding to make it happen, and the reason he entered into a relationship with Industrial Heat was to obtain that funding, and the lawsuit filed by Rossi maintains that the agreed-upon payment was not delivered, and without those funds perhaps the goal of mass production of the E-Cat that Rossi has been striving towards is now in jeopardy.
Of course we’ll have to wait and see how things develop in the legal arena, but time, money and energy are now going to be tied up in legal proceedings. A technology that many had hoped would be introduced with a news conference, a big media campaign, news stories, and all-round celebrations is making its appearance on the world stage in a very different way. Will the E-Cat survive this birth trauma?
