Those who are following the E-Cat story have their attention focused on the October 28th test in Bolgona, where, according to Rossi, his mystery customer will carry tests out on the 1 MW E-Cat plant (actually, Rossi has said it will be consultants for the customer who will be doing the test).
Andrea Rossi has now stated that this test will also be the last public test he will be doing. Rossi was asked if the test would be completed on the 28th (i.e. not continue over the course of a number of days). He responded:
Yes, after the 28th no more public tests, we will be too engaged to manufacture and test for our Customers. We will continue R&D work with Bologna University and Uppsala University, but the work will not be public.
Actually, also the test of the 28th will not be public, being a test made by the Customer, with his experts, along a contractual protocol. Anyway it will be the last work with a public report made upon the resulting numbers.
Rossi does not seem to be particularly motivated to put on a show designed to convince the public at large. Rather, he seems to be eager to start getting involved in the commercializing of his invention — he has always said that products in the marketplace would be the most convincing evidence he could produce.
Does all this mean that the public will be shut out of the August 28th demo? Well it doesn’t seem so. Rossi has recently affirmed that there will still be top level scientists and science journalists who will attend the event, and today when asked if there would still be a webcam and real-time power meters recording the event he replied, “Our Customer, who will make the test, is still planning for this.”
So it will be interesting how this show will be put on. Hopefully over the next few days we will get a better idea of what to expect. One thing seems clear — attention to this event, and to this event is growing; the recent Forbes magazine article has had a lot of hits and has probably contributed to the spike in people searching Google for the term ‘E-Cat’ (see this link on Google Trends) Interesting times indeed!
