Estimating the Cost of an E-Cat Plant

I thought this was an interesting post by ECW reader Bruno who has attempted an estimate of the cost of a 1MW E-Cat QX industrial plant based on Andrea Rossi’s comment that the return on investment (ROI) would be less than two years.

With current US natural gas prices, the fuel cost is approximately $20/MW-hr for thermal energy (steam etc…). Dr. Rossi is talking about a 2 year ROI.

Let’s assume perfect 24/365 each year for two years, and no labor costs. If he plans to sell HEAT, but not the E-Cats themselves, to hit $20/MW-hr his capital cost would need to be $350,000 (fully installed). In reality, he’d need to offer a lower price than $20/MW-hr (let’s say $17), he’d probably need to take the E-Cats down a few days/year for maintetance (let’s assume 350 productive days/year), plus he might have part time labor costs associated with servicing the installation (let’s say $25,000/yr).

This means that the total installed cost for him would need to be on the order of $235,000 just to break even. I think that he needs to get LEONARDO’s capital cost somewhere below $150,000 (installed) to sell 1 MW of thermal energy profitably. So his cost per 1 MW E-Cat (uninstalled) will probably need to be on the order of $100,000. Of course, the capital cost could be higher if the payback period is stretched beyond 3 years.

Bruno