Some recent comments from Andrea Rossi on the Journal of Nuclear Physics explain that for the Ecat SKLep to operate, a connection to the electrical grid is required. Here is a comment from yesterday:
Dan Galburt
June 12, 2022 at 10:52 AM
Dear Dr. Rossi,In your recent response to Audin you reminded him that the ECat SKLep requires an external energy source to operate, and implied that in its present form it could not power an electric vehicle.
Question 1
Have you operated an ECat SKLep using a 12V battery as an external energy source?Question 2
If the answer to question 1 is no, is there any reason to believe that powering the ECat SKLep using an external 12V battery would not work?Question 3
If the answer to either question 1 or 2 is yes, could the combination of ECat SKLeps, rechargeable batteries, and charge control electronics give the electric vehicle an unlimited range?Question 4
If you have not tried such and application is there, in principle, any reason it should not be possible?
Rossi’s Answer:
Andrea Rossi
June 12, 2022 at 11:41 AM
Dan Galburt:
This issue is very complex and answers imply confidential information and things that we still have not understood.
We are still working on it.
Warm Regards
Andrea Rossi
And this from today:
Dan Galburt
June 12, 2022 at 5:15 PM
Dear Dr. Rossi,According to your specifications, the ECat SKLep requires a 12VDC source of electrical energy with a current flow consistent with one watt of power consumption to operate. Many customers, including myself, will want to obtain this one watt of electrical energy from a battery so that ECat SKLep can operate without a grid connection.
Question
Are you saying that the ECat SKLep that you intend to manufacture will operate from a grid driven power supply, but not from a battery power source?
Warm Regards,
Dan Galburt
AR’s reply:
Andrea Rossi
June 13, 2022 at 2:18 AM
Dan Galburt:
So far, yes,
Warm Regards
A.R.
So this is all quite curious given that it is possible to produce the same quality of AC pure sine wave from a battery, as is produced from a grid connection. It makes one wonder why the grid would work for the Ecat and a battery would not.
One hypothesis has been set forward on this site by John Oman, which might give some insight on the issue:
I am an EE and understand the reasons for grounding our electrical systems. In all cases that I can think of offhand, that path to ground is intended (if not required by regulation) to be NON-CURRENT CARRYING.
The electrical energy generators/sources that we are accustomed to using are, at a minimum, two terminal devices. In the case of DC, they have a positive and negative terminal for us to connect our load to.
It has been posited that the SKlep gets its charge/electrons from ‘somewhere else’ called the vacuum. Through some magic we don’t yet understand, large numbers of electrons show up in the SKlep. It is my posit that the SKlep becomes negatively charged and serves as the negative terminal for us to connect our load.
Where is the positive terminal for us to connect our load? My posit is that the positive terminal is the EARTH, or something else that is massive, conductive and capable of absorbing huge numbers of electrons without significantly changing its net charge.
Maybe our problem in understanding this apparent contradiction is that we are used to thinking of electricity in a certain way, while the Ecat is producing electricity in a different way to the conventions we have been using for centuries. If it works at all, the Ecat has to be doing something different from conventional generators, so I suppose it would not be too surprising if the normal conventions of electricity do not fully apply. The fact that Rossi states that there are things going on “that we have still not understood” is interesting, and indicates something very new.
