In the meantime, Lockheed Missiles and Fire Control continues to ramp up their push into Power Management with a new series of marketing collateral claiming wondrous new super powers. (great videos guys, where's the product?) The intelligent microgrid solutions appear to combine traditional power management with network based sensors that do for power what routers/switches do for network data, ie, provide intelligent monitoring and failover. The systems also allow for positioning of monitoring and measurement capabilities. Are batteries and storage touted in the videos? Not really but wind mills and solar panels are highlighted, both of which aren't real yet (without batteries) according to Vinod Khosla and Dick Weir in remarkably similar remarks captured about the same time a year ago. (see VK's google speech and DW's leaked audio--search for it).
In one of the new brochures, storage is flagged as being available via "Multiple Technologies."
The idea that Lockheed will take control for part of the steps required to create DoD/DHS EESU's is plausible to me. First, Lockheed is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Secondly, they offer manufacturing support services...and claim expertise in this area. See especially, their Build-to-Print Manufacturing Capabilities brochure. They also tout their ability to assist with offshoring of work, thus, slightly forgetting who they are working for apparently...stuff for a future rant.
If it turns out that Lockheed has cozied up to EEStor and is causing them to prioritize around defense applications rather than Zenn Motor's automotive applications, it raises the question why. There is likely a good reason for this. From Dick Weir's perspective, Lockheed is winning the quiet game against Zenn. Lockheed has somehow managed to keep their executives confined to incomplete thoughts and smiles while Zenn has until only recently (say around January 2010) begun to play the game as well. Personally, I do not like the quiet game. No, not at all.
See bing for further visuals.
5 comments:
aye, I know someone that works planes there, Marietta, Smyrna, same difference.
Yes, there is a reason. How about this one?
The EESU is built and tested. It meets the spec or even exceedes it. But it turned out to be very difficult to limit the use of a "civil" EESU made for ZENN to non-military apps only (by capping the discharge current with built-in fuses?). So, a bad guy could make an armor-piercing EM rifle etc. in his garage out of an EESU taken out from a Tesla or Volt. China could copy the thing and use it in weapons en masse. Imagine a 1000-hp tank that can operate under water and never burns, for example. Hence all the silence. The thing is simply too good a weapon to be talked about openly.
The catch is KP does this stealth thing with all their investments even windmills. I can see the point of Lockheed going stealth. EESTOR will make battle field robots possible among other things.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1845016404760165806#
We have all the bits now except power.
Albatross' argument is dead right in other respects.
Secrecy has a flip side However. If the company hits a problem it can't solve, outsiders can't step in and offer ideas. If you can't fix a problem then you also wont know who to ask on the out side for help. Thus many secret projects founder as a consequence of the secrecy it self. It has slowed down the wind mill.
Albatross,
Assume that your initial premise is correct. Then what would happen is that EESTOR and L-Mart would simply start production and put the units on the grid. IOW, they would simply go into production and put these in secured areas all around the USA and buy and sell energy to the power companies.
And if that were to be started, then you would see congress push bills that supported electricity storage. Yet, we do not see that.
IOW, I think that you premise is wrong.
Windbourne
Your assuming the government has a clue. As if Katrina and the Gulf Oil Blowout isn't enough evidence that a frontal lobotomy is a common job promotion tool in the public service.
Government and the energy industry does not grasp grid storage. While eestor is a break through, profitable technologies for grid storage already exist, compressed air is profitable, battery warehouse storage is profitable. There's a Hydrogen technology on the books that's been ignored.
These things are blocked by pricing red tape. No-one in government wants to open that door. The result would be a truly decentralised grid, one that can't be controlled or taxed. The few politicians that grasp this fear it for with free energy comes decentralised political power.
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