126 comments

1. Kanskje på tide å flytte hele virksomheten til Sverige. Der kan man tross alt stole på folk. Det er vel en av de tingene vi Skandinaver er kjent for. Altså Sosialdemokratiet istedenfor kapitalisme 🙂

2. I think that Rossi is fixated with the idea that the world’s establishment wants to kill or steal his invention and rights to it, and is therefore very suspicious of people and firms who try to buy into his property rights and technology.

   In my opinion, he is right to be suspicious considering the massive paradigm shift that the E-Cat will cause in the global energy market once the e-Cats start rolling out of production lines. The shock would be so great that the oil market would be floored, knocked out, hitting many big firms and billionaires, shares and bonds markets while green investment, which is Obama’s and the EU’s money playground, will hit a whole minefield.

   So you see, if the E-cat technology is real, if Rossi happens to be honest genius who has discovered how o produce power, thermal and electrical at dirt cheap rates, and threatening the establishment with a global Force 9 earthquake in the energy market, then one will readily conclude that Rossi must have a price on his head, same as Pons and Fleischmann, two of the world’s leading electro-chemists, had, and whose character and scientific professions were killed by MIT, Caltech and the scientific establishment, who would have lost billions in funding if Pons’ and Fleischmann’s claim were declared real.

   I think that Rossi did play a sort of ‘dirty’ game during the past 5 years, a sort of cat-and-mouse game in which he played the mouse, emerging every now and then for the cats to jump on him, but he always pulled back in time not to be eaten alive by the big fat cats of energy and research funding beneficiaries, aka nuclear scientists.

   Now that Rossi is on the verge of rolling out his first E-cats, he pulled back from the IH agreement on a legally valid reason with the scope of retaining all the rights on all E-Cat patents and products. He deserves it.

   Or he’s just a fraud.

3. TEST

   a quote

4. In my humble opinion. If Rossi could study LENR when imprisoned for energy related fraud with Petroldragon so succesfully and become a world leading innovator to come up with the Ecat he should get the Nobel Fraud prize..sorry Physics..or sell some film rights ..Scam stories showing rich fools are popular

5. As the Industrial Heat and Rossi saga unfolds, the SAXO Bank/SAXO Group causes reason for more head-scratching by the skeptics… How the heck does Rossi fool all these people?

   Saxo Bank is a Danish investment bank. It was founded as a brokerage firm[1] in 1992, under the name Midas Fondsmæglerselskab, by Lars Seier Christensen, Kim Fournais and Marc Hauschildt. The name was changed to Saxo when the company obtained a banking license in 2001. Saxo offers trading through its online platform SaxoTrader in Forex, stocks, CFDs, futures, funds, bonds and futures spreads.[2] Private wealth management services are also offered. According to Saxo, roughly two-thirds of its activities are derived from partnerships with institutional trading partners. The company functions as an online broker with a bank license, without offering traditional banking products.

   “Saudi Arabia prepares to break oil-wealth dependency” 05 April 2016 by Stephen Pope Managing Partner, Spotlight Group, United Kingdom

   Quote

   A potential partner for KSA to partner with is Industrial Heat LLC that was incorporated in 2012 and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. This firm has already been granted the license to sell and manufacture energy catalysers “E-Cats” in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, I do not think it unreasonable to envisage the Saudis looking for partners to help start laying the groundwork for commercialisation of LENR within the Kingdom and for export overseas. – end quote

   https://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/saudi-arabia-prepares-to-break-oil-wealth-dependency-7386201 

6. Hello LENR Fans,

   To help facilitate real time participation for LENR related topics I’ve built a chatwing chat room for use by anyone who wishes to share ideas and discuss current events associated with LENR. There will also be an associated google drive folder for documents.

   The room will be moderated and there is a strict no defamation policy.

   While forum posting is great, often posters may want to discuss things and post images and videos in real time and get immediate responses from colleagues and acquaintances.

   Please feel free to share this room’s url with anyone you like.

   http://chatwing.com/LENRChat

   Posters will have to login via FB, Twitter or Chatwing. The room supports the posting of images and videos via BB code tags

   (e.g. [img].image.url.[/img], [video].video.url.[/video])

   Chatwing is a good platform for this. I’ve used it for another topic for about a year now. see http://chatwing.com/EEStorChat

   All the best in your various endeavours to understand the enigma that is LENR.

7. Just a redirect:

   ‘guest’ asked me to say that his comments come from sources close to the action as he stated on LENR Forum – I’ve repeated his post there more fully on the next thread here:
   https://animpossibleinvention.com/2016/04/12/and-heres-the-opposite-hypothesis-on-the-rossi-ih-affair/#comment-4417

   Also – in his next blog Mats links his report on the 2011 test that convinces him most (more than the hot-cat stuff). I’ve commented on his report there too.

8. mars, i hear you saying the system was open during startup and the report does not contain an analysis of heat loss during startup.

9. colonelmustardinthediningroom — you have to take into account the water heated and boiled during start up.

10. mats, ok taking your readings it appears an average near 2680 W was delivered into the system for 4 hours.

    based on these numbers, more energy was input through heating than you state was output via the warmed water heat exchanged output flow.

    nowhere in your report are total input energy and total output energy directly compared.

11. @colonelmustardinthediningroom
    That’s right. In my report I focused on the SSM. You can do the calculation on input energy with the data in the report now if you want. If I remember right, it will not be enough for the energy released in SSM, taking into account the water boiled during start-up. And, opening the reactor afterwards, the only energy storage possibility would have been inside the reactor block , underneath the heat exchanger fins. I made an estimate on how much energy would have been possible to store in 100 kg molten Pb, and it was just a tenth. And, not long after, Rossi went to Uppsala and opened the reactor block too, before a test that later failed for other reasons (the ceramic glue of the reactor block breaking, since it hardened 24h instead of 48 h), and there was no storage mechanism inside. BTW, the lead shielding was not inside the reactor block, but on the inside of the outer walls.

12. mats, in your report you write “To start up the reaction and reach equilibrium, electric power was fed to a resistance inside the E-cat for about four hours, interrupted only by short intervals of self sustained mode.”, and there is no mention above of the power supplied for those four hours.

13. @DNI
    I actually didn’t remember to have written that. I remember, however, as you say that there were reasonable discussions on the positions of the thermocouples.

14. @Mats
    You write in the report “the thermocouples were attached at well chosen positions”, But wasn’t the thermocouple for the outlet of the secondary circuit positioned on the heat exchanger, close to the inlet of the primary circuit. Which in my world seems like a very poorly choose position. And a very possible source for incorrect temperature readings.

15. Guest post sent by Thomas Clarke makes much sense in addition that Rossis mind might have changed if he invented much better technology while tests were ongoing and so on.
    So this could well be real story but as with many well fitting stories, it could as well just be scenario adjusted well fitting to publicly known info, written in format of leak.
    I think Rossi has stated ERV report should come out soon, so that could be next more concrete checkpoint. Meanwhile we have lots of interesting reads, like this link tweeted by Ruby Carat https://t.co/LE8kAnElpZ

16. Ascoli65—you could maybe check that calculation again. I already made a brief estimate, counting on the energy stored in 100 kg molten lead—about 3 MJ. It’s about the same as the energy stored in solid steel with a delta T of 500 K. The amount of energy produced in 3.5 hrs SSM however was 10 times larger (about 8 kWh or 30 MJ). The reason I checked this was that I thought that there was lead shielding inside the reactor, under the heat exchanger fins seen in the picture in my report. However, I later learnt that the lead shielding in the FatCat was on the inside of the outer walls, and could not be molten.

17. @ Mats Lewan,
    – I was actually never impressed by the HotCat and found more confidence in the tests of the older E-Cat, particularly of the test on October 6, 2011, when it ran in self sustained mode for 3.5 hours, with water boiling inside all the time, even though cool water was input continuously.

    Yes, I agree, the October 6, 2011, test is one of the most representative of the Ecat’s affair. The model tested in that occasion, the so called fat-cat which weighed 98 kg, was one of the module of the 1 MW plant tested few weeks later, on October, 28. This last plant, in turn, was “substantially” the same of the 1 MW plant recently tested for one year in the USA (1). Therefore to date, the October 6 test provides the best set of data and information on the performances of the low temperature Ecat.

    The data you collected and reported in that occasion are quite good, complete, and accurate and give us all the information required to assess the energetic performances of the fat-cat. I only disagree with your energy calculations and your conclusion.

    It’s easy to demonstrate, with the help of a simple thermohydraulic model, that the water inside the fat-cat can be kept boiling for 3.5 hours by the heat stored in a steel mass of many dozen of kg. Therefore, what you saw and felt by hand is not necessarily the effect of a “self sustained mode”, but it can simply be the effect of the cooling phase of a massive and initially very hot bunch of steel plates placed inside the inner box of the fat-cat. I leave to the common sense of your reader to decide what is the right hypothesis.

    (1) “http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=892&cpage=51#comment-1149083”

18. New Guest — you can always cherrypick failures. I would not expect E-Cat to ba a hoax, although its performance in many ways might have been exaggerated. As for now there’s no evidence for high COP, but from what I have measured myself, e.g. at the October 6 test, I’m confident that there has always been a COP in line with many other documented and published LENR research examples, with COP between 1 and 3.

19. Mats,
    now there is IH who says that they could not get the e-cat to work,
    and then there was the “SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden”, who meassured any excess power from the hot-cat (you surely remember the story you wrote for Nyteknik)
    http://www.nyteknik.se/energi/svensk-investering-i-e-cat-hejdad-efter-test-6403722
    … and then there are people like Thomas Clark, who showed that the Lugano test is flawed, with the conclusion that excess heat is actually in the margin of measurement errors.

    Wouldn’t it be time now for you to consider/accept that the e-cat is a hoax?

20. colonelmustardinthediningroom, yes I mean that, and I’m fairly confident since I measured the voltage on all cables attached to the E-Cat box regularly. It’s all in the test report, here: https://animpossibleinvention.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/test-of-e-cat-october-6.pdf

21. mats, when you say ‘… ran in self sustaining mode …’ you seem to say you are certain ‘self sustaining’ means ‘no external or internal sources of energy other than the claimed reaction’, and equally certain that you were not again duped as in every other instance of a test by ar.

22. @Thomas (and Guest)
    I believe that there can be certain insights in this scenario.
    I also agree with you, Thomas, on flaws in Penon’s HotCat report. The issue with radiated heat from inner and outer cylinder being added was highlighted by me and Magnus Holm of Hydrofusion, and changed by Rossi after that.
    I was actually never impressed by the HotCat and found more confidence in the tests of the older E-Cat, particularly of the test on October 6, 2011, when it ran in self sustained mode for 3.5 hours, with water boiling inside all the time, even though cool water was input continuously.

23. This is posted on LENR Forum, by `guest`. I thought it should get some exposure:
    – – – – –
    Here are the rumors I have heard:

    1) Rossi moved forward with Penon as ERV for yearlong test without formal agreement from IH. Rossi likely believed that since Penon performed the 24 hr test he did not need IH’s approval (and contract language might support this).

    2) IH cared very little about the yearlong test, as what mattered to them was the transfer of all know-how that was to immediately follow the $10M payment. Therefore, they decided not to rock the boat over Penon or the apparent shell ‘customer’, as the test held no meaning for them. Being able to make the tech on their own was critical, as that would allow them to test to their heart’s content and both resolve any remaining doubts from independent tests as well as make refinements to optimize performance. Didn’t matter to them if the yearlong test was or was not a sham.

    3) On several occasions prior to conclusion of the yearlong test IH reached out to Rossi indicating they were having a hard time replicating his results and asking for his help. Rossi’s supposed response was that he was focused on the yearlong test and would only help them after the $89M payment (which seems to violate contracted terms).

    4) Sounds like Rossi constructed the contract as it was apparently shopped around to other potential investors in more or less the same form who rejected it on the basis that Rossi wanted installment payments and no ownership in the partner entity. Other potential investors worried this was a hallmark of a potential scam. So unlikely that Rossi was duped or tricked into any of the contract terms (and Rossi’s complaints about what IH has been doing regarding the IP all appear to be ok under terms of contract).

    This paragraph is all my interpretation – IH viewed the $11.5M as a necessary “ante-up” payment to get access to the know-how. It was a substantial sum, but one they could afford to write off if things didn’t pan out. Now the test is completed and Rossi has moved the goalposts refusing to help them independently make it work until after the $89M payment despite contract clearly stating that was to happen as a prior condition. IH has invested in other LENR researchers and is seeing encouraging results, they have also seen encouraging results when Rossi has been directly involved in tests so they want to keep the contract open, but that is not enough to justify paying $89M more on hope that Rossi will finally show them how to replicate. From their perspective a pre-condition of the $89M payment has not been fulfilled by Rossi, so they are legally justified in delaying and the contract remains in place along with all other conditions (e.g. first right to purchase additional territories, Rossi non-compete, access to all new inventions, etc.) until Rossi meets contracted terms. They are at a stalemate, but one that legally appears to favor IH despite the fact that Rossi has spun public opinion in his favor with selective truths and partial statements. To be clear – I don’t think this is fraud, I think Rossi truly believes in the results he is generating, but I also think it most likely that due to his own paranoia he is holding back from IH and mischaracterizing them as trying to screw him out of his money.

24. @ Stefania,
    your 0-1 binary approach can be strictly applied only to the first step (A) and the answer given by science has long known: A(0), that is, the CF is unfortunately not possible, it follows that the Ecat cannot be real. All the other steps have no meaning, the choice is forced by nature.

    However, I appreciate your mentioning of the article by Gail Tverberg, because it describes the most appropriate scenario in which to frame the whole CF affair, Ecat included. This scenario contemplates the collapse of our society, not able to find enough resources to extend indefinitely the rising level of our necessities. The hope in some miraculous energy, such as CF, able to avert this outcome does nothing but aggravate the already critical situation, because it reduces the public perception of the seriousness of the situation and of the needing to take as soon as possible some very unpopular decisions. Each delay makes increasingly steeper the precipice that awaits us beyond the Seneca’s cliff.

    To explain the reason, allow me a metaphor, but instead of your mental airplane, let’s take the train on which we are already seated

    This train is the one on which all mankind has been traveling for hundreds of generations. For a very long time it has proceeded very slowly. A short convoy pulled by an old steam engine, fueled with wood collected around the railway edges. Then, suddenly, the train entered the fossil-land territory, where a huge amounts of coal and oil allowed more powerful locomotives to run faster and faster. Meanwhile, an impressive number of wagons were hooked and the convoy became absurdly heavy.

    The present problem is that our convoy is approaching the border of fossil-land, placed at the edge of a deep and wide canyon. Beyond this canyon, we can glimpse the other bank, fusion-land, an almost unlimited territory, on which the train could have continued to travel for more hundreds generations.

    Since the fifties of the previous century, politicians and scientists kept on ensuring their contemporaries that a prodigious bridge (ie the technology able to harness the nuclear fusion energy) will allow the train to pass on the other side and that it will certainly be finished on time to when the train will reach the fossil-land limit. Unfortunately, more and more experts tell us that such a bridge, which in the meanwhile became incredibly massive (ie the tokamak technology), cannot be realized, or, if ever, it barely will be able to support itself.

    Common sense and prudence would have advised since long to operate the brake to allow the convoy to stop before the cliff, in the sweetest possible way. But this was not done on time. To the point where we arrived, brakes should be operated very abruptly, but it would cause many injuries inside the wagons, so no one wish to assume the responsibility to take such a tough decision.

    And here that we can put the issue of CF, or any other free or easy energy. Since 1989, some imaginative people are proposing too easy (to be true) ways to cross the canyon: rope bridges, jump springboards, and so on. The experts (ie the mainstream physicists) have already judged them totally inadequate to bring the train on the other side. The boldest of these imaginative people, and here we come to the ecat story, say that the bridge is ready and travelable, and, in order to let the people believe it, they show just a large panel placed at the chasm edge with a bridge painted on it.

    The promoters of such mirage are misleading the driver and passengers of the train, delaying the moment of braking, and increasing the gravity of the rail disaster that awaits us.

    Spreading false hopes, as the fusionists do, is not without consequences. In this case, it could be very very harmful.

25. Argon,

    my view is that the bashing of IH that has been going on here and elsewhere – quite without substance – is more harmful. Rossi can do LENR a lot of harm.

26. Thomas Clarke. I tend t agree on your points, since even I would have not written 2) and 3) to report and sign with my own name and reputation on stake (no matter of x m$). But with so much conflicting information and even facts (Rossi sued IH, IH claims no substantiation, still IH collects money by demoing plant to customers/investors and so on), there is not much point nit picking tiny details of whole story as prove of final truth. I remember that Rossi made number of mistakes and conflicting statements in his claims btween -11 and -13, but that did not make him as fraudster possibly totally opposite, as seen by IH:s real documented actions last year.
    By wait and see attitude, we don’t lose a dime, but bashing him by theories here and there could cause lost opportunity to human kind. And that is something we cannot afford just because we might have our own flawless theories.

27. I made an unsubstantiated (in the text) remark below about Rossi’s testers thinking most here would be familiar with the details. G.B. Goble on another site is clearly not so familar, so here they are:

    For the Lugano testers, note: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ClarkeTcommentont.pdf
    What I find really unprofessional is that having publicised the original report as independent they do not retract or comment themselves in the face of proper but severe criticism as above.
    BTW I’m not including those responsible for the isotopic analysis in that – I’ve no quarrel with their work!

    For Penon, please read his own (original) report from the Dec 2012/Mar 2013 tests as linked on ECW, and verify for yourselves the following summary.

    Fabio Penon now has no reputation to lose in the area of Rossi device testing! He makes the following errors in his initial published report:

    (1) Given two concentric hot cylinders he reckons the total radiated heat must be the sum of that from the inner and outer. Absurd even to a lay person – since nearly all the inner radiation is immediately absorbed by the enclosing outer cylinder. This was corrected by Rossi but stands in the original published report as a weird extra positive error.

    (2) He says in the report (you would not believe this, and I’m paraphrasing only slightly):

    “The input power as measured by the voltmeter and ammeter was quite different from the input power as measured by the kWh panel meter. Therefore I decided to discard the kWh readings”

    Not only did he discard them, but he does not tell us what they are, or why he is preferring the voltmeter and ammeter readings, or what is the reason for the difference.

    (3) Having decided a voltmeter and ammeter are better than a kWh meter, he does not tell us in the report anything about which voltmeter and ammeter he is using. It is sort of tester 101 that you first list all your measurement equipment, where it came from, has it been calibrated. In this case it matters because many voltmeters and ammeters will give a massive under-reading of power in this setup: you need very good meters to do a correct true RMS reading of such a spiky waveform.

    Error (1) is corrected by Rossi in an additional document. Errors (2) and (3) stand unaltered.

    You don’t have to be technical to see that his own report is damning. Someone who can write such a report is either grossly unfamiliar with how to conduct tests, or deliberately skewing the results and not caring for his reputation.

28. @lookmoo:

    That is a bold statement – but I can’t follow your logic since you have provided none.

29. I would say that IH action early 2015 is logical proof of a plan to run away with the IP without paying for it in full.

30. sad but true, the old quip “there is a sucker born every minute’. and everyone knows it.

    nevertheless, when the human instincts to trust and hope are tangled-up with a strident practiced sleight-of-hand artist offering untold free riches, say in the form of an ‘overunity energy’ product, the rate becomes about one every millisecond, as is proven multifold times here.

    best to keep your eye on the verified evidence and your wallet, and not quit your day job on a false hope for a false prophet, otherwise it becomes your turn soon enough.

31. @Thomas Clarke

    You’re correct. Rossi chose people to test the ecat who were too polite, afraid of being excluded or excoriated by the Maestro, and not suspicious of sleight of hand or trickery. That is his gift. And indeed the “marks” (end targets of the scam) chose themselves. Rossi just did his best to select the most gullible among them which is why the ecat didn’t seem to work when Quantum Australia and NASA brought capable people and gear with which to test the original ecat in mid-2011. I always wondered about that because at the time, Rossi claimed to have something like a dozen ecats continuously under test but curiously, none was available for these testers to try. It made no sense but nobody was disturbed.

    I will be curious to see if any of the people who strongly believed Rossi will acknowledge that the skeptics were right, after Rossi finally crashes or disappears. Will they apologize for the crude and inappropriate insults? Does Bowery regret stalking me and threatening me on a talk portion of a Defkalion demonstration now that it is clear I was completely correct that they were nothing but unpleasant liars, crooks and thieves with no technology whatever? Or maybe he lives in an alternative world where there is a viable explanation for their disappearance shortly after claiming that seven of the largest companies in the world had successfully tested their hyperion?

    Probably there will be no apologies and no looking back. I expect believers to make excuses for Rossi no matter how badly he fails — the problem was IH, the problem was the oil and nuclear industries, the problem was closed minded scientists… and then they will go on to Godes/Brillouin, Mills’ BLP, Miley, Swartz or some other new “scam (or major mistake) du jour”.

32. @Mats Lewan et. al. -Ascoli65 -Stefania Conti -Thomas Clarke -Hans-Göran Branzell -Lennart Thornros -EEStorFanFibb -Mitch -Colonel Mustard in the Dining Room -Tyy -Mary Yugo -Guest -Pangoo -Albert -Alan Smith -Barney Panofsky -Daniel Maris -Robert J Matulis -Investor -Josh G -Ian Walker -Ozcar -Abd ul-Rahman Lomax -Neil Ferguson -PierreOrdinaire -Jim Pelsor -BKM – Slad -Rob Woudenberg -Argon -Teemu – LENR the New Fire – Samuel North -Gerard McEk -James Bowery – Engineer -Teemu…

    Love Imagine as You Will

    Love

    Imagine as you will

    Everyone is an instrument in a symphony

    Each playing notes

    Some melodious
    others discordant
    Each ringing true

    At first and then less often

    The harmonies
    are elusive
    Unreproducible

    Yet strongly sustained

    Leaving us curious

    When heard, the composition is magnificent

    Through keen observation over time

    Improvements are seen

    In the instrumentalists and their orchestration

    This certainly heartens

    Good participation and virtuosity

    As it has in our friend
    Martin Fleischmann
    Thanks for everything

    Tears and all

    –gbgoble2012 In Honor of Martin Fleischmann

33. Daniel,

    Testing a self sustaining ecat is altogether different from one to which you need to supply power. Here is how it would be done:

    – Take the ecat as a black box out into a large parking lot, place it on table top made entirely of transparent glass (or polycarbonate) at a location of your choosing (not Rossi’s).

    – Connect some simple power measuring method and device to the output
    (it needs to be provided by and chosen by the people doing the testing, but it need not be very accurate)

    – Rossi is allowed to connect any sort of power providing device (batteries, inverters, generators, a very long extension cord)

    – Rossi is asked to start the ecat

    – Rossi is required to remove himself and all his equipment while ecat self runs

    – Calculate the maximum running time assuming the absurd proposition that the entire device is made of fuel or batteries or whatever the most dense non-nuclear power source is that you choose

    – Let the device run at the desired output temperature for at least ten times that long.

    Voila, simplicity itself. Thomas Clarke need not worry about thermal camera errors. If the ecat really does what Rossi claims, it runs, unattended, essentially without limit. If Rossi needs to fix something, he can do so with tools only– no power source or added fuel. This test would take a few days at most.

    Given the claim of a COP of 50, it boggles the imagination that IH did not require this sort of test. The only way Rossi could cheat is if somehow he had a very long and completely invisible extension cord!

34. “there is one born every minute.” or, for the ‘wanna believers’ and the ‘waterhead conspiratardocracy’ so gullible to drinking the poison fallacies a huckster swirls they would spin to promulgate slop implausiblities and twisted hypotheses giving that huckster the benefit of doubt, it’s more like every second.

    just saying.

35. @Daniel Maris

    Yes, of course, everything could be binary code. Death-life. Light-darkness. Yin yang.
    For this the messages sent into space by Pioneer 10, the Arecibo radio telescope, the Cosmic Call, used the binary code.
    But my goal was not to hold forth on the binary code
    I wanted to analyze data at the logical level.
    You say that my approach insulting people. Why?
    I do not see how it is possible.
    I have absolutely told nor I have suggested that the analysis of the facts are simple.
    I have just created a basic logical analysis.
    We can argue for days, we thinking of a thousand subtleties.
    We could write a book (How Mats :-))
    But we can only deduce. We are not aware of all the facts.
    Then to infer the basic logic of analysis is essential.

    You can arrive at different conclusions from mine, but the “grid of thought” that I have exposed, I believe that it is useful

36. “If Rossi, this superb scammer who chooses his marks so well”

    It is recorded fact that he chooses his testers (Penon, the Swedes) so well. They make methodological mistakes that normal independent testers just would not!

    I think his marks choose themselves…

37. “if you can fake a COP of 50 surely you can fake a self-sustaining cycle?”

    That is true – but it is also weird that COP is being used as a performance indicator when temperature-dependent cooling would turn any COP into COP=infinity with higher runaway protection than Rossi’s current system can provide. It is one of the little issues that engineers see as red flags.

    Also, in a lab setup, ignition can come from a removable battery and then a self-sustaining device can much more easily to be proved to have excess heat since it needs no power connection,

38. Mary Yugo –

    Your statement is very clear and may indeed be correct. Only problem for you is that IH have not so far called into question the ERV tests and their statement in contrast to yours is completely opaque. In fact their statement could even embrace the meaning “That Rossi’s a darn clever fellow – he can get the machine to work – but we, due to our incompetence, just can’t manage it.” Clearly that is not what they mean but in terms of strict interpretation, their statement is so lacking in clarity as to be capable of that being construed that way.

    As for your point about a “self sustaining” cycle…if you can fake a COP of 50 surely you can fake a self-sustaining cycle? So I think that point rather stands against you. If Rossi, this superb scammer who chooses his marks so well, can persuade people he has an LENR machine that produces a COP of 50, surely it would be the smallest thing in the world to tell the credulous witnesses “Look – now I have turned off the electric supply and it is still registering a COP gain of X”.

39. Stefania –

    I do agree with you that if Rossi has nothing, then in that sense then this game will soon be over. He now – on his own claims – clearly has a fantastically successful LENR machine which, even if he uses only his own resources, it should be possible to bring to market successfully within the next year or so. However I disagree with just about everything else you say!

    As for the operation of the “mind”, I think you are confusing chemical reactions – which can occur anywhere (in a rock, a chair or a water molecule) – with subjective consciousness.

    As others have said, binary code in any case has nothing to do with how the brain operates. Or to put it another way, you might as well say night and day are examples of binary code.

    Popper’s falsifiability principle is pretty poor. On that basis you can’t say in truth you love your partner, because it’s not a falsifiable statement. Even if, Othello-style, you finished them off, you might still love them, as Othello claimed of Desdemona. Falsifiability is just a good ready reckoner like Occam’s Razor – but it’s not a guarantor of truth.

    And anyway, I feel your approach is pretty insulting to most people here who I think already realise the answers to what is going on could be very complex. We could have people lying or telling the truth in varying degrees, and we could have varying levels of incompetence/competence or delusion. Given there are several actors – investors in IH, IH chief officers, IH reps, new IH affiliates like Brillouin (it seems), the ERV, Rossi, Rossi associates, the company providing the testing facility and so on, you pretty soon end up with a v complex set of factors. I think most people here, whichever way their emotions may be pulling them, are honestly interested in understanding what has been going on and what might happen now.

40. @Thomas
    Neurons transmit by means of the action potential
    Sodium and potassium (both have one positive charge, +), calcium (has 2 positive charges, ++) and chloride (has a negative charge, -).
    Closed open.
    0-1

41. see lenr forum for fuller answer = issue of “stealing”
    https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/3000-A-Reflection-On-Rossi-IH-Dispute/?postID=16797#post16797

42. Hi Stefania – we will have to disagree about the brain 0-1 thing and also about whether the binary A proposition must be decided.

    Best wishes

43. @Thomas
    Our mind works according to binary code. Our neurons are working with 0-1.
    Despite that our minds create symphonies and philosophies.
    To understand we must try to sort the data.
    The first assumption is necessary:
    A)
    E-cat is not work (0)
    E-cat works (1)
    This does not imply that everything is perfect.
    Remember the Popper’s principle of falsification
    Beyond the possible improvements / enhancements ,or Rossi technique works or does not work.
    Try to get around this point leads to not properly evaluate the IH actions.
    If I think like you, “though they would still leave open the possibility it could be made to work – why not?” then I have to assume that HI is still “stealing” ideas to improve them.
    Those who make high-risk investments working on percentages. They reason of R: R.
    Game theory. Rosss-black. All-nothing. 0-1
    I’m not 0-1. I go up on the plane. But before I make order in the mind

44. @Engineer

    Can you tell me where are the claims for anything working in that article? NASA have been doing their own experiments trying to prove WL theory for 5 years now. There is no reference to positive results.

    But good on them for trying. A pity they do not publish the (negative) results they refer to in the article.

45. This comes from NASA: (Are they scamming people too?)

    http://climate.nasa.gov/news/864/

46. I think it’s time to blow out of the water the ridiculous idea that Cal Tech or MIT or a government lab, or Jeff Bazos or Elon Musk’s companies would be unwilling to test an ecat which had a high power output, a long running time, and a high COP (more than 6). However, before bothering to spend the time and cost, these organizations would need for Rossi to arrange an acceptable test with no flaws of methodology, which has never happened. If there had been such a test, and as Bowery pointed out, it showed a COP of 50, then large numbers of big companies and wealthy people would be very eager to confirm it.

    The problem has always been and is now, that Rossi uses his friends and associates and the tests are not independent. And when Rossi leaves obvious gaps and places for major errors in his tests, as Thomas Clarke also noted, he never takes advice to fix these gaps and always continues to a new device and a new test with a whole bunch of new gaps.

    Finally, any system which as an output/input ratio (“COP”) of more than 50 could be made to self run simply by routing a trivial portion of the output heat back to the input through a control system. Then, showing it worked would be almost self-evident. That Rossi has not done this obvious step is virtual proof that he is lying — about the ERV’s independence and result and about essentially everything. As Rossi has *always* done about his “work”.

47. Mats,
    Fabiani was willing to talk to you in November. Maybe he can give you an off the record account of what’s going on from his point of view?

48. Cold Fusion (LENR) Verified – Inventor Sues Industrial Heat, LLC.
    Apr 06, 2016 The Silver Law Group, P.A.
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cold-fusion-lenr-verified–inventor-sues-industrial-heat-llc-300247317.html

49. @james

    “At a COP of 50, the cost of verification plummets. You don’t need long duration tests or highly accurate calorimetry. All you need is some way of monitoring the electrical power out of the wall and a gross measurement of the heat power out of the device for a day or, at most, a week.

    A measurement like that would be so cheap, quick and low risk, it is hard to imagine why it hasn’t been done by multiple external parties by now — unless the actual number is far lower.”

    I agree, but even at COP=3 there should be no difficulty. The problem is that Rossi’s tests have all involved Rossi-sympathetic people (the Swedes, or Penon) who are in the printed record shown to be both technically incompetent and unable to follow normal test methodology when conducting tests.

    Both of those statements can be substantiated from the printed record of their test reports, and I’ll happily provide details on demand which could be verified by others.

    I think IH’s problem was that they did not want to look a gift horse in the mouth and either did not get external reviews of the test reports, or ignored negative comments in those reviews, perhaps thinking that “anti-LENR” bias should be discounted.

50. errata
    not reproducable (Parkhomov) or totally deficient in methodology (Song)

51. @Engineer

    “[Rossi’s] E-cat has been replicated”

    I’d question that statement, if you mean “successfully replicated”. I know of no real test other than Rossi’s that gives similar results. The set of Lugano replications are using an original which showed no excess heat and extraordinary isotopic changes (see below). No isotopic changes have ever been seen by others. And nearly all replication attempts show no excess heat – those that have done this are not replicable or grossly deficient Parkomov) in methodology (Song).

    So you might say that the Lugano e-cat reactor has been properly replicated – given it also showed no excess heat – but I don’t think that’s what you mean!

    Click to access ClarkeTcommentont.pdf

52. @Stefania

    I agree that it would be good for everyone to take a step back and look at the big picture.

    I don’t agree that your analysis below helps us do that.

    The problem is that you require everything to be black or white.

    Unless we are completely prejudiced, your first question “does the e-cat work” – which you allow a 0 or 1 answer – must surely have a sort of in-between answer. That will then change – but never get to exactly 0 or 1 – as more evidence from Rossi’s tests comes in.

    Your binary thinking makes you go seriously wrong when it comes to analysing IH. They must, when they signed the License agreement, have had a view that Rossi’s technology was a good bet. Worth 1.5M after the first test, $10M after the second test, and (for them to cough up $89M) worth $100m or so after the long-term test.

    Part of that evaluation is “does it work at all?”. I’m sure after the first 6 independent tests they thought it did. I’m equally sure that their thinking was not binary and given enough evidence of it not working they would modify their view and decide on balance that it appeared not to work (though they would still leave open the possibility it could be made to work – why not?).

    You just can’t capture that with your argument so you come to erroneous conclusions.

    I’ve noted this type of binary argument from many people and it does not do justice to the difficult real-world decisions that VCs need to make. They can never be sure their investments are good (in fact usually they go bad). They can never be sure that the evaluation of an investment will not change, positive or negative.

53. One of the most important scientific concepts is: all is relative to the measure unit.
    This is true in science, but it is especially true for our mind and for the patterns that it uses.
    I think, when all is confused and difficult, it is necessary to order to reason correclty. If we are immersed in the details, we lose sight of the “big picture”. He can’t see the wood for the trees.
    We must, therefore, get on a “mental airplane” for changes our perspective.
    Now we are in the airport, we see people, houses, trees, cars. Everything looks great. Everything seems important.
    And indeed it is. Relatively to that system of measurement.
    the airplane takes off and climbs. The things that sooner filled our eyes and mind seem to disappear. The picture changes. Simultaneously, everything becomes smaller and everything gets bigger.
    We see that the place where we started is just a small piece of a larger reality. We see mountains and seas (that were hidden before us), we understand that our mind was absorbed in a thousand details inessential. Details that hid us a greater reality.

    This long preamble is only to invite you to take “mental airplane” before reading me, to invite you to use the correct measuring system.
    We proceed, then, to reason by following conceptual blocks of the basic values ​​(using the 0-1 method that is false-true) and let’s review the% statistical chance.

    A)
    E-cat is not work (0)
    E-cat works (1)

    In the case (0), everything is simple. Rossi will not produce any technology. No one will produce its technology. In a few days or months….. game over.

    In the case (1), all is enormously complex. To produce this technology means totally change the world. It means clashing with forces that have enormous power. It means upsetting the balance of industries, large capitals, Countries.

    B)
    In case A (0) who takes damage and who acts? In the end, in addition to disappointment for many who hoped for this idea, the damage does not exist. IH does not have to pay. Rossi can not dispute. No one acts

    In case A (1) who suffer damage and who acts? In this case the Entities that could suffer huge damage would be many and powerful and they they would have the means, the opportunities and the reasons to act. Clearly that secretly.

    C)
    In case A (0) there would be entities or individuals interested in owning the technology? NO.
    In case A (1) there would be entities or individuals interested in owning the technology? YES.

    D)
    In case A (0): IH (Cherokee) which subsidizes and collaborates on the project for years and, (and if they are not crazy, they have always monitored and evaluated the thing for which they paid) , waiting to withdraw from the contract the last time? The objective’s confirmation time ? After 1 year of testin which they were present? Either they are crazy or would have gone a LONG time ago.

    In case A (1): Why IH (Cherokee) which subsidizes and collaborates on the project for years (and if they are not crazy, they have always monitored and evaluated the thing for which they paid) , waiting to withdraw from the contract the last time? Because, if the test is valid, they understand that the technology (of which ONLY IN PART are owners) worth so much that they want to walk alone.

    E)
    In case A (0) industrial forces, political, lobbies, act and intervene? NO

    In case A (1) industrial forces, political, lobbies, act and intervene? YES

    F)
    In case A (0) did so by IH (Cherokee) request/maintain/obtain patents? NO

    In case A (1) does so by IH (Cherokee) request/maintain/obtain patents? YES

    G)
    In case A (0): The superior technology developed by E-cat quark has value? Certainly not. If the “mom” is a scam, the “son” is a scam.

    In case A (1): The superior technology developed by E-cat quark has value? YES, HUGE

    Hot-cat is not E-cat quarks. The stakes are raised.
    Worldwide scientists are making experiments on LENR. Not only we are close to a breakthrough, but this change is absolutely necessary the world.
    Read this interesting article:
    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/02/08/the-physics-of-energy-and-the-economy/
    The change that will result from LENR will epochal. It will create a new world, but it will destroy an old world.
    It will create a paradise. But for some it will be hell.
    Rossi and/or other scientists will come soon to the final result (or are we have already arrived).
    But Rossi “sings out from the choir”. He upset the applecart. He’s not in the political schemes / economic / industrial. He can not be managed / directed / controlled.
    If the hypothesis A (1) is right, he has a head-start over the others. Not huge, but he did.
    He has only one defense “flood the market”. Others have only an attack: stop him.
    How? I believe that often he had feared for his life. “Make it disappear him” would be an option (often used). But it is easier to discredit him and meanwhile “to use him.”

    We took our mental plane.
    We left below the dust.
    Now it’s up to you to look at.

54. @Investor
    I have forgotten very little when it comes to theestory. in 2009 DW said he was putting “systems together”. He was referring to building modules in the powder production line not EESUs. So, like many lazy people in the nayboob peanut gallery, you again mis-characterized the facts.

    Next, the eestorblogger B got tired of following/reporting on the story and had another passion to pursue, but at last report he still has his shares. B has never claimed eestor was a fraud. At the very most that quote you provided shows he believes that the company and technology was mismanaged and/or DW is a very hard person to deal with. So another mis-characterization by you.

    I am not the last person defending EEStor in any case. There are many people like myself that understand this story fully and know EEStor has a shot at disrupting at least a $2B high voltage cap market. EEStor’s disruptive cap technology has been verified by three, third party Intertek reports and the expert evaluation of Dennis Zogbi who lists hundreds of technology companies and major, global banks as his clients. If that has done nothing to change your mind that’s a failing on your part I’m afraid.

    As far as James Kofman goes, JK paid $2 million dollars to take control of EEStor Inc. after being at the helm of ZMC for 2+ years. If he, at the same time, didn’t think that EEStor’s tech was valuable then he’s an incompetent CEO and his opinion matters not.

    But it is true I admit, at the time of JK’s departure EEStor had not licked their storage product development challenges. And they may never succeed at making a commercially viable energy storage product, although they will continue to try with the promising help of Akron University polymer experts.

    Having said all that, they DO have a disruptive capacitor product as shown by Intertek and Zogbi and, contingent on a capital raise, they will entertain interested cap makers in joint venture discussions sometime in the next several weeks.

    And as far as your ideas on the Rossi vs. Darden saga, there is no way that IH would have behaved the way did over the past 2 years if Rossi had nothing. They filed patents, allowed a (supposedly bogus) 1 year test to continue to completion, expanded their own operations into a 20000 sqft facility, registered a number of domain names (some related to the light emitting EcatX), and raised 10s of millions of dollars from other investors.

    Sorry, but I’m not impressed right now with your superficial/erroneous analysis on anything business/technology.

55. We have to understand a few things:
    >If Rossi’s e-Cat is real, functional and paradigm changing, ALL green energy projects will go to the dogs.
    >Since Rossi’s claim is based on cold fusion, LENR or LANR, no establishment would want to touch it with a 100 km long pole, especially following the Fleischmann and Pons story. Cold Fusion is a toxic subject. Hence Rossi could not trust MIT, Caltech or any other established entity to carry out scientific due diligence on his claim and working apparata.
    >Rossi has never invited investors. (“I don’t want to play football with the bones of others” is his standard reply to anyone requesting investing in his venture), namely, he never scammed anybody.
    >His e-cat has been replicated while others have successfully produced excess energy from other LENR methods, such as Brillouin.
    >Many scientists have claimed excess energy in laboratory conditions.

56. At a COP of 50, the cost of verification plummets. You don’t need long duration tests or highly accurate calorimetry. All you need is some way of monitoring the electrical power out of the wall and a gross measurement of the heat power out of the device for a day or, at most, a week.

    A measurement like that would be so cheap, quick and low risk, it is hard to imagine why it hasn’t been done by multiple external parties by now — unless the actual number is far lower.

57. @McEck

    There is no customer. Rossi has never had a customer other than himself or people he hired. Can you explain what happened to the original megawatt plant which was sold to the US military which, according to Rossi, then ordered 12 more? In flippin’ 2011, almost FIVE YEARS AGO? Nothing heard!

    And remember Rossi’s featured customer representative, Domenico Fioravanti? The famous NATO colonel, whatever that is? What has happened to him? Why has nobody seen or heard from him since? He wasn’t shy in 2011!

    As someone else wrote, when IH realized that Rossi and his attorney and friends were the customer, they recognized that Rossi had duped them and they would not believe the “ERV” report or pay Rossi his next payment.

58. @Thomas Clarke

    You observe that all of the tests for Rossi’s technology have the potential to go wrong. Indeed they do and in my opinion, this is by design. Rossi’s design. I think he carefully and deliberately made sure each “mismeasurement” that he performed or arranged to have others perform, would yield results highly biased to show more heat made at the output (or less power at the input) than was the reality.

    What constantly mystifies me is that nobody required him to test correctly. As early as spring of 2011, Jed Rothwell and I discussed and Jed passed on to Rossi,the design of iron clad tests which would have proved that the ecat worked, if it did. These involved either sparging (condensing) his steam in a calorimeter or using mass flow calorimetry, in each case with blank runs (inactive or unfueled reactors) and calibrations of the output power measuring system, using the electrical heaters. Rossi consistently refused to allow such tests, saying such tests would not be necessary because he already knew what the results would be. I bet he did know! The few times potential customers *required* proper testing, the ecat did not work. I wonder how Lewan explains THAT to himself. (links and references if anyone needs them)

    It defies belief that IH paid this man $10 *MILLION* without actually performing a single valid test of their own not involving Rossi or any of the people who had tested him before. Yet that is what must have happened otherwise it would not have required three years for IH to realize that they had been cheated, duped, and deceived.

59. @EEStorFanFibb

    Fibb, I remember your postings from the TheEEstory.com. Sorry, but EEStor is a classic case of an inventor fooling himself, and it’s arguably a classic case of defrauding investors with claims of a super battery . You seem to have forgotten the statements by EEStor CEO Dick Weir about batteries “rolling off the production line” way in 2008! That never happened of course. Even B, the true believer who ran TheEEstory.com has quit, with the statement “If I had to listen to Dick Weir’s un-decypherable bullshit, I’d probably lose my lunch.”

    You are the last person defending EEStor. I will leave the final comment to the former chairman of EEStor, Jim Kofman, when he resigned two years ago. “The results to date at EEStor have obviously been very disappointing for everyone. It is clear from our work that EEStor remains a long way from a commercial product.”

    Nothing has happened in the two years since to change my thoughts on EEStor.

    @Guest

    Thanks for posting that document. It supports my statement that IH doesn’t have $89m. But it still doesn’t support the claim that “Cherokee as an entity not involved”. For a start, it’s dated 2015, which is long after IH got started. It’s not clear if IH International Holdings is the actual IH, or just an vehicle for some class of investor stock.

    Several of the LLC’s listed appear to be Cherokee related e.g. Brickhaven is an entity controlled by Darden and based in NC. Also, JT Vaughn is a director and employee of Cherokee, and he is in the signature block, so he could well be representing Cherokee in that respect.

    I don’t believe you can substantiate the claim that Cherokee is not involved just by looking at this document. The truth is in the IH cap table, which is not public.

    On a different topic, a lot of people claim Darden’s recent positive statements about IH mean anything. They are just PR. He wants good PR for his fund, so he says positive things. I am fairly sure APCO is not out there telling him to hedge his bets or be negative on IH or Cherokee!

    I suspect the implosion of IH happened fairly quickly. No positive results and the slightest whiff of fraud from Rossi, who is already a colorful character, and investors will run a mile. Rossi spends too much of his time making fantastic claims on JONP, and he has ramped up the claims in recent months to include production lines, new products etc etc. No investor could read JONP with a straight face and maintain their composure, especially if they were not seeing any progress at IH. I bet the moment Darden learned that the ‘customer’ was a shell company created by Rossi’s attorney in a small industrial storage unit, it was game over.

60. I have not seen a statement of the ‘customer’ yet. If that statement (maybe via a lawyer intermediate) confirms the ERV regarding COP, then no further conformations are needed in my view. AR should start selling E-cats in Europe. He will have a huge market. I am not familiar with all this legal stuff and have no idea where this will go to. No doubt shit will hit the fan and it will do no one good! If I were IH, I would try to settle it.

61. @ gbgoble, (re your answers at 13:40 and 13:51)
    Should I assume that you are embarrassed in properly answering my questions?

62. Also, what Hans-Göran Branzell said. If Rossi wanted acclaim and untold fortune, all he needed to do was have an “untouchable” (unimpeachable) organization like ORNL, CERN or Sandia, Cal Tech or MIT, test the ecat. That could have been done in weeks, not five years.
    I took this from Mary Yugo comment.I agree that this is how the tests should
    have been done.
    I wonder why when IH had doubts they did not at least ask A.R for another
    independent test.If he was a reasonable person he would say OK .
    If the plant is still running this could still be done.

63. @Ascoli65

    Yes, haven’t we/

64. @Ascoli65 April 10, 2016 at 12:52
    @ gbgoble,
    – “It is the published mission statement of the U.S. DoD DoE and NASA to…
    YES it is…

65. None of the above

    Meaning I am non-responsive

    I am sure we will figure this

    OUT

66. @ gbgoble,
    – “The most advanced LENR applied engineering is emergent from U.S. Government programs. Everyone else is lagging behind.”

    OK. It doesn’t take so much to be the most advanced in something that, in the opinion of the mainstream science, doesn’t even exist.

    I also have no difficulties in recognizing, in accordance with JR, that the US “Government has also been nearly the only source of funding for cold fusion since 1989.”

    So, considering that the ecat is deemed nearly unanimously by the LENR community as the most advanced and promising LENR engineered device, can we also deem that it has been promoted (since the beginning) and financed (in some way) by the US Government?

67. Ask yourself how IH worked out whether Rossi’s stuff works or not? We know the answer from the license agreement. They get independent tests done. We know of SIX INDEPENDENT TESTS. All were positive. On basis of the reports from these tests IH thought that Rossi’s stuff works, and were very happy with Rossi. Other investors (Woodford, China?) saw tests and were also very happy. Note that at least one of these positive tests (Lugano) used a reactor designed and manufactured by IH. So not only does IH know Rossi’s stuff works, but also they know they can reproduce it.

    That is fact, backed by the license agreement, and statements from principals. (The Chinese involvement is somewhat vague).

    Now suppose every one of Rossi’s tests turns out to have errors that make it invalid. IH cannot be expected to realise in advance that this would happen. They will not jump to that conclusion. It is only after much in-house testing with repeated inability to replicate the tests (even using the same reactor that worked in Rossi’s test) that they will think this. And then maybe they will pay attention to the comments of skeptics on how all of the tests have loopholes.

    For this guess to be plausible (it sounds really strange) you need some background on the tests (all fact):

    1. The single high quality and latest Lugano test is known not to have worked, with COP = 1 to within experimental errors, due to a mistake in the analysis. This has been published and generally accepted, but the Lugano authors have never replied nor retracted their report. I guess to do that would be commercially sensitive. The Lugano isotopic change results are meaningless because Rossi’s previous set of isotopic change results were eventually stated by Rossi to be due to his substitution/contamination of ash. The same could be true here.
    2. The two released Penon tests all have failure mechanisms based on bad measurement of input power. Penon (extraordinarily) did not even specify what equipment he used to measure input power. He stated that two different methods of measuring input power had quite different results, and chose one of them, without saying what the other method gave, or justifying his choice. His report would not be accepted as satisfactory by any competent reviewer. He also made basic errors when calculating output power.
    3. Rossi’s previous public demos all have known and various failure mechanisms detected by observers. When Rossi has been asked (by friends, e.g. Josephson), to tighten the test to avoid the failure mechanism he has not done this.
    4. The two Ferrara tests also have a known failure mechanism based on bad measurement of power. They are the best of the bunch, but the followup to Ferrara, intended by the same authors to be more rigorous, with additional input power checks, is Lugano. This followup is known not to have worked as above.
    5. The long-term test that Rossi claims shows COP=50, with a report not yet released, has very complex instrumentation (>100 sensors) and is validated by Penon. On the basis of his past record that validation is unsafe.

    These facts show that many people’s intuition (if a test looks good and has been signed off by a scientist it will probably be OK) is just wrong. That may be true generally, but Rossi’s technology is a special case. It has a unique ability to generate apparently good test results that are nevertheless wrong.

    That is in part, IMHO, due to the testers (including Rossi himself), who all have qualifications but they are the wrong ones to do the tests.

68. @ gbgoble,
    – “It is the published mission statement of the U.S. DoD DoE and NASA to assuredly ensure U.S. technological advantage in all energetics.”

    Exactly, all we know that. But you wrote “assuredly”, an adverb, not an adjective. It means that they should “be sure to” ensure to the US every energy source which has the minimum chance to provide a techonogical advantage. So why they didn’t ensured to the US such enormous technological advantage in due time, when they were the only ones to have knowledge of such prodigeous source of energy?

    Do you think they lack of the suitable informative channels? Or that they were aware that such source didn’t have the minimum chance to be real? Or that they didn’t have the right arguments to convince Rossi to cooperate with them?

69. Oh Well…

    Another non a priori result.

70. Dear frends!

    Today we have a new statement from Rossi. Which patent papers is he referring to?

    “Today I have been informed that IH has again made another patent using my name as the inventor and my invention, to make a patent assigned to Industrial Heat, without my authorization.

    This new patent is copied from my E-Cat 1 MW. Now, beside any forensic consideration, let me underline this: WHEN THEY HAVE TO PAY, THEY SAY MY E-CAT DOES NOT WORK, BUT, THIS HAVING BEEN SAID, THEY APPLY FOR ANOTHER PATENT WHEREIN THEY DESCRIBE A REPLICATION OF WHAT I HAVE MADE AND SAY THAT IT NOT ONLY WORKS, BUT IS AN INVENTION OF THEIR PROPERTY !!!!

    And they do this now, with the litigation in full course, wherein they say that they say that they do not pay because I did not teach to them to make the plant that they have just patented, declaring that it works, to the USPTO of the government of the USA!

    I leave to the intelligence of your readers any consideration on the issue.
    Warmest regards to you and your readers,
    Andrea Rossi”

71. @Ascoli65

    The most advanced LENR applied engineering is emergent from U.S. Government programs.

    Everyone else is lagging behind. Is this by design?

72. @Ascoli65 Yes I offer a thought.

    It is the published mission statement of the U.S. DoD DoE and NASA to assuredly ensure U.S. technological advantage in all energetics; coal, oil and nuclear.

    AND Most certainly (ASSUREDLY) nuclear energies, whether radioactive U238, hot fusion or cold fusion.

    Assured

    adjective
    1. guaranteed; sure; certain; secure: an assured income (outcome).
    2. bold; confident; authoritative: His art was both assured and facile.
    3. boldly presumptuous.

73. All I can find is this….which has zero provenance AFAIK. But maybe Rossi has something better to go on.

    Click to access R_123621412_3.pdf

74. @Mats Lewan in your analysis you are assuming that the asset managers of Cherokee, Thomas Darden and JT Vaughn, allways negotiated rationally in the case of Industrial Heat, that they had a longterm strategy and followed somekind of a plan, but I think there was a point at which their action was purely driven by greed, conviction and last but not least arrogance. At that point they have suffered a loss of control and no longer acted rationally and for this reason destroyed the complete project. A short and good summary of the psychology of investment http://www.ajbam.co.uk/news/psychology-investment-%E2%80%93-or-how-not-lose-your-shirt

75. Mats,
    have you been able to find evidence of the new IH patent application that Rossi mentioned?

76. Sauce for the sandwich from the man himself.

    “Today I have been informed that IH has again made another patent using my name as the inventor and my invention, to make a patent assigned to Industrial Heat, without my authorization.

    This new patent is copied from my E-Cat 1 MW. Now, beside any forensic consideration, let me underline this: WHEN THEY HAVE TO PAY, THEY SAY MY E-CAT DOES NOT WORK, BUT, THIS HAVING BEEN SAID, THEY APPLY FOR ANOTHER PATENT WHEREIN THEY DESCRIBE A REPLICATION OF WHAT I HAVE MADE AND SAY THAT IT NOT ONLY WORKS, BUT IS AN INVENTION OF THEIR PROPERTY !!!!

    And they do this now, with the litigation in full course, wherein they say that they say that they do not pay because I did not teach to them to make the plant that they have just patented, declaring that it works, to the USPTO of the government of the USA!

    I leave to the intelligence of your readers any consideration on the issue.
    Warmest regards to you and your readers,
    Andrea Rossi”

    https://www.lenr-forum.com/forum/index.php/Thread/2997-Statement-From-Andrea-Rossi-on-IH-Patent-Application/?postID=16674#post16674

    —

77. Latest comment by Rob gets my vote also in addition to what Matts updated. We have to remember what e-cat technology was at the time of signing the contract. Rossi desperately needed reliable partner to industrialize e-cat, he was rather alone, and 100m would look fair price for COP around 6. He also stated at that time that he was not so much interested on high price, than that new partner will ensure technology gets delivered to help all people as soon as possible.

    Later when Rossis understanding of the process improved and reached COP 50 + found a way to direct electricity production, mr Rossi had a second thought about price and license coverage, and real intentions of IH, so he started to hold back secrets of these improvements. Maybe at this point disagreements had begun. Missing payment and IH-approaching other parties gave Rossi opportunity to sue IH and try to get rid of bad contract.

    Now comes the question. Does these violations of contract by IH give Rossi freedom to sell those licences to other parties? And does he need to wait for court order to declare agreement void? With latest e-cat improvements, if true, the price tag would have different number of zeros.

    Nevertheles if Rossi does not settle with IH, additional delays in industrialisation and ‘final’ confirmation of e-cat gets additional delays.

78. It seems to me that the whole clash between IH and Rossi is not about patents or test results but about progress that Rossi has been making (and probably still is making) which is not clearly included in the agreements. The original agreement was made when Rossi was concentrating on the so-called ‘hotcat’ technology. In case the hotcat concept would work within the boundaries of the agreement IH would pay Rossi the remaining millions. This included the trade secrets to prepare the hotcat ‘fuel’ which is not described sufficiently in the patent applications. All this includes a working concept based on hotcat technology able to work with COP => 6.

    Meanwhile Rossi has made significant progress in understanding how his hotcat process works and can be improved. He calls this the x-cat technology, the next generation e-cat technology. These insights and progression makes hotcat methods probably obsolete because of x-cat superiority. In my view the whole fight that emerged between IH and Rossi is not whether conditions have been met, but whether knowledge of the x-cat should be included or not.

    Rossi points out that the ‘old’ conditions in the agreement are still met (implemented with hotcat methods) and that IH therefore should fulfil the agreed payment. For IH this hotcat knowledge transfer is not profitable anymore now Rossi has his x-cat technology in his pocket.

79. @ gbgoble,
    your list of governmental documents supporting the reality of LENR is impressive and very important. As for the Ecat, the most relevant is (B), the DeChiaro’s presentation.

    Could you please explain us why the DoD, having had knowledge of the alleged ecat performance since at least 2009-10, let Rossi reveal it to the world, through a site, the JoNP, at which has directly contributed? The DoD could have instead acquired that know-how for a modest sum, with respect to the importance of the invention, and could have developed the technology.

    This story does not make sense if the ecat, and the LENR in general, are real. A scam organized by Rossi and his friends is also less plausible. Can you imagine such a fraud supported since the beginning by well informed and competent members of government agencies? A more logical explanation would be … well, it’s not difficult to find one.

80. Thanks Guest April 10, 2016 at 01:38 (I didn’t know this)

    Per contract two separate conditions preceded the $89M payment requirement:

    1) convey all IP, know-how, recipes and provide any assistance required for IH to make the technology work immediately after $10M payment,
    2) report of successful one-year test.

    Filing lawsuits does not have affect contract, it’s still open.

    That’s good to know.

    I’ve learned a lot from the comments, I look forward to more.

    Here are a few thoughts.

    1) The high temp E-Cat LENR Lugando results are reliable and accurate, Rossi has the goods and for some reason isn’t sharing the ‘know-how’ with IH.

    2) Both Rossi and IH have the report of the 1 year test. Neither have said they were dissatisfied with the results. Either one could release it, or leak the results anonymously. The lawsuits have given each of them a reason not to.

    3) This is a strategy, that I will agree with and speculate on as many of us do. Fraud? I do not think so.

    4) These recent works (some not so recent) depend on the reality of high temp LENR thermal. So much effort for nothing? I do not think so.

    5) Have advanced Defence labs achieved high temp LENR thermal? I think so.

    6) My basic view of the Lugano report validity (these two reference it 2015/16)

    Canadian Defence Agency

    A) High temp LENR thermal as described in “Evidence base for the development of an enduring DND/CAF Operational Energy Strategy (DOES)” is based and depends on this. They have no problem with the Lugano report.

    Ditto for…

    B) “LENR Phenomena and Potential Applications” Dr. Louis F. DeChiaro

    He joined the US Navy as a civilian Physicist in September, 2006 and since 2009 been performing investigations in LENR physics and supporting the EMC efforts of Branch Q51 at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA. During the period 2010-2012 he was on special assignment at the Naval Research Labs, Washington, D.C. in their experimental LENR group.

    Also dependent upon high temp LENR thermal.

    a) “Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Aircraft” 2015 NASA/NARI

    b) “The Application of LENR to Synergistic Mission Capabilities”
    Presented at AIAA AVIATION 2014 Atlanta, GA USA
    Douglas P. Wells NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
    Dimitri N. Mavris Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

    Dimitri Mavris is the Boeing Professor of Advanced Aerospace Systems Analysis at the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the director of its Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL). Dimitri Mavris received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His primary areas of research interest include: advanced design methods, aircraft conceptual and preliminary design, air-breathing propulsion design, multi-disciplinary analysis, design and optimization, system of systems, and non-deterministic design theory.

    c) “MPD Augmentation of a Thermal Air Rocket Utilizing Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” 2012 Roger Lepsch, NASA Langley Research Center; Matt Fischer, National Institute of Aerospace; Christopher Jones, National Institute of Aerospace; Alan Wilhite, National Institute of Aerospace.

    c) “Impact of Advanced Energy Technologies on Aircraft Design” 2014 Roger Lepsch, NASA Langley Research Center; Matt Fischer, National Institute of Aerospace; Christopher Jones, National Institute of Aerospace; Alan Wilhite, National Institute of Aerospace; 52nd Aerospace Sciences Meeting, AIAA SciTech, (AIAA 2014-0538).

    e) “Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research Phase II: N+4 Advanced Concept Development” 2012

    f) SpaceWorks LENR Spaceplanes (NASA contract)
    Advanced Concepts Group (ACG) Overview October 2012
    Atlanta, GA Brad St. Germain, Ph.D. Director, Advanced Concepts Group

    Links to these works found in “LENR NRNF Low Energy Nuclear Reaction Non Radioactive Nuclear Flight US and EU Applied Engineering”

81. good post Josh

82. Some sensible comments from Investor, Neil F, and Tyy! The usual skeptical wittering is also apparent too…

    Mats, I think your ideas are plausible, but I also think you are missing an important piece of the puzzle: IH apparently gave Rossi’s IP to Brillouin, which appears to have hugely annoyed Rossi.

    I think (excluding fraud) that the above is the more likely root cause of the Rossi-IH divorce, rather than IH welching on 89m; a small price to pay for a working reactor, which is possibly confirmed by Abd’s timeline…

83. Thank you Mats for this analysis. On reading your commentary I recalled a number of posts by Dr. Rossi on JoNP where he discussed Leonardo’s focus on and awareness of competitor activity. I encourage a fresh look at JoNP with this perspective. There is irony in the fact IH was likely the subject of Dr. Rossi’s posts.

84. @Investor

    you wrote: “Kleiner Perkins invested millions in EEstor which never panned out despite a decade of work and was arguably fraudulent. No lawsuit, they quietly dumped the stock years later.”

    You were doing great up to that point. Unfortunately you mis-characterized the EEStor / KP relationship and EEStor’s legitimacy. While EEStor Inc. has struggled to fully commercialize their energy storage technology they have a revolutionary capacitor product that is ready to be adopted by industry and (contingent on a capital raising) their parent company EEStor Corp is about to engage in joint venture discussions with global brands in the capacitor industry. For more information about EEStor’s successful product development see http://www.eestorcorp.com/assets/eestor-zogbi-report.pdf and http://www.eestorcorp.com/.

    Furthermore, KP’s fund that held EEStor Inc. shares needed to close as it coming to the end of it’s 10 year life. In 2013, principals in KP *sold their EEStor Inc. shares to EEStor Corp (then Zenn Motor Corp) for $2 million and 3 million shares in EEStor Corp which gained control of EEStor Inc. around the same time. Why?Because there is/was value in the EEStor technology.

    So NO, NOT “arguably fraudulent”. Not in the least.

    *see http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/zenn-motor-company-announces-agreement-to-acquire-series-a-eestor-shares-tsx-venture-znn-1818481.htm

85. Investor –

    You are quoting an interpretation by a journalist. I have certainly seen no statement from Darden or Vaughn that Cherokee are directly investing in IH . It’s possible, indeed likely, that investors in Cherokee are also investors in Industrial Heat but that’s a different matter. As regards using offices and so on, there is no reason why IH would not have entered an agreement with Cherokee on all that or Cherokee may have a general policy of offering such facilities gratis to entities pursuing worthy causes.The document referred to by Guest also suggests an absence of direct involvement by Cherokee.

    I accept what you say about VC investors not wanting to allege fraud. But IH surely cannot have simply ignored the matter given the nature of the contract. Surely they raised concerns with Rossi? Which then leads on to what was happening with the 350 day test. Did they really just let it go ahead despiute serious misgivings? Clearly a lot went on before Rossi launched his pre-emptive legal action.

    Guest –

    I think you make a good point about why IH would not wish to cancel the contract even if they have not “substantiated the results”. Another possibility is that IH’s results fall short of Rossi’s claims. They might have achieved a COP of 1.5 say in their replication and not 50. That presents them with a dilemma. You wouldn’t want to abandon the technology if it is producing excess heat but equally you don’t want to hand over $90million for a non-commercially viable product.

86. @Investor

    Here’s a link that was found on LENR-forum.com related to the woodford investment: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09553031/filing-history/MzEyMzczNDg0OGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

    Cherokee as an entity not involved (Rossi basically complains about this in the suit as well).

    As to why IH would not walk away, to me it’s obvious. Per contract two separate conditions preceded the $89M payment requirement:

    1) convey all IP, know-how, recipes and provide any assistance required for IH to make the technology work immediately after $10M payment,
    2) report of successful one-year test.

    We’ve all focused on #2, but #1 would be way more important for IH. And until #1 is fulfilled, easily argued that $89M payment isn’t contractually required. This means IH sits on the contract until #1 is completed, and if it never is then the contract remains unfulfilled and further payments aren’t required.

    Why walk away from that contract ever? Even if you doubt Rossi’s technology works, you sit on it in the off-chance that at some point in the future he is able to show you how to get it to work. If Rossi teaches IH how to make the tech work down the road then great, $89M payment triggered, IH starts manufacturing and selling. If not then Rossi hasn’t fulfilled a pre-condition of the $89M and they aren’t obligated to pay until he does.

    This is why they don’t call him fraud, and instead basically say we haven’t been able to make it work. Rossi is obligated to help them get it to work. There is no benefit to walking away, and no harm in keeping it open.

    Keep in mind, they’re invested in other LENR technologies, and still seem optimistic even in their press release responding to lawsuit. They see promise in LENR in general and may be getting good results elsewhere. So if you believe in LENR in general, you don’t end the contract with Rossi (because if other people have something real then maybe he does too), you keep it open until the day he is able to show you enough to replicate and validate his claims on your own.

87. @Daniel and Guest

    Everything I have seen indicates Cherokee is an investor in IH. e.g. this 2014 press article “Confirmed: Raleigh’s Cherokee buys into controversial nuclear tech device” from http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2014/01/24/onfirmed-raleighs-cherokee-buys-into.html

    It would be extremely unlikely for Darden and Vaughn, key employees of Cherokee, to be directors of a non-Cherokee investment! Also, the Form D for Industrial Heat shows IH’s address at Cherokee’s office.

    I am not aware of any public corporate documents that would list details of investors. If there are documents that show this, please post a link. Otherwise, it’s inaccurate speculation.

    @Ozcar you wrote:

    “If IH never could substantiate any of Rossis claims they should have ended the 1 year test and made a press release that Rossis ecat doesn’t work and walked away before it could get into this mess.”

    I’ll say it for the third time, this rarely happens. Unsuccessful fund investments of this type are not announced by press release. They are quietly disposed of. “Victory has 100 fathers. No-one wants to recognise failure.”

88. Rossi would have been able to publicly demonstrate a functional unit any time in the last five years, Instead we have experienced the fallacious ‘ever improving model’ with more and more extreme claims. A serious venture capital company has spent $11 million for the rights(to Rossi) plus costs of ongoing due diligence and 3 years trying, but unable to validate the claims made by Rossi, has chosen not to further invest. Through their concerted efforts to reproduce the ‘Rossi Effect’ with a number of other experts and all the information Rossi could give them, no one else has been able to produce a commercially viable or reliable long term reproduction. It’s past time to let go and move on. It’s turned into bad theater.

89. In the movie “The Big Short” the manager of a fund with liquidity problems sends an email to the investors explaining that he has to stop withdrawals. Could something like this prevent Woodford from withdrawing their 50 Mils after knowing about the lawsuit?

90. Thanks everyone for interesting and thought worthy comments so far. My hypothesis might not be the best, or not even close, and it’s the discussion that brings out a wider perspective. Please go ahead.
    I still want to see the report when it will be released, and have it scrutinised by you all.

91. Sorry if the point has been raised before, but I see a lot of confused use of the term Intellectual Property (IP) vs. the engineering knowledge needed to reproduce. IP involves the legal right to use or sublicense the use of certain technology, not so? So it is not IP that is at issue in this lawsuit, but the failure to deliver the engineering knowledge, or that the knowledge doesn’t work.

92. Until an obvious break, while IH are not getting Rossi’s stuff to work, Rossi must provide reasonable help. So unless IH are lying through their teeth which I view as unlikely the divorce will be when this process of getting help to make stuff work breaks down. Given Rossi’s temperament, the breakdown will be pretty obvious to all parties.

    The “we are working with a team and test rigorously, don’t believe Rossi” IH PR must have been after the break-up.

    Whether Rossi and/or IH have been preparing before the break-up for possible after break-up actions I’m not sure, could be both, one, or none. Lets face it, any company trying to work with Rossi as specified in the license agreement, given the stuff does not work, will be having a very tough time.

    My guess is that Rossi was more prepared than IH, both the 18 volumes remark, and because at some level he would probably have been clearer that IH would never get things to work than IH.

    It will be fascinating to see what happens now. I guess that IH will not want to throw accusations of fraud around but will do that if pushed into it by Rossi. Given $10M to play with, Rossi sure elevates calling people “snakes” to a new and more expensive level.

    If IH delayed the test as Rossi claims it would be either they could not find anyone and were not too concerned, or they wanted to wait until they had resolved doubts about Rossi’s stuff before the test.

93. Sorry, one edit on last comment.

    Given their reputation, I am fairly certain that IH would have made the $89M payment to Rossi on receipt of the positive one-year test results if Rossi had made good on his contractual obligation to share all of the know how to make the reaction work.

    IH didn’t want out of the contract, they wanted Rossi to work with them to make sure they could replicate the results. The entire one year test is a red herring. They’re still not declaring they want out of the contract, they just want Rossi to meet his end of the bargain to teach them everything they need in order to be able to substantiate before they pay out $89M (seems like a reasonable request).

94. @Investor

    Your comments on how equity funds work are accurate, however you’re making one small mistake and that is that Cherokee is not actually involved in IH. Tom Darden and JT Vaughn, as individuals, along with several other individuals and Woodford Funds invested directly into IH, not Cherokee (per previously revealed investment documents). Rossi has dragged Cherokee into the lawsuit, but therw is no legal or financial connection between the entities.

    We’re all focused on the one-year test results because that has been our target of anticipation for so long, but connecting the dots it is clear IH cared little about it (hence not raising objections to Penon and an empty shell ‘customer). They cared only about the transfer of IP and know-how that was to be made immediately after the $10M payment (hence why they would pay the first $11.5M – it was an ante to get the know-how). Per Mats’ own interview with Fabiani on this blog, Rossi did not transfer the knowledge of how to make the core charges to IH.

    It comes down to this, IH saw demonstrations from Rossi and viewed “independent” confirmations and expressed guarded optimism, but at the end of the day they had their eyes only on that transfer of knowledge when they would be able to make it work entirely by themselves and answer any remaining doubts (i.e. substantiate his claims). Unfortunately it seems that Rossi hasn’t helped them enough to do that. So while we hem and haw about what the 1 year test may or may not have shown, it’s irrelevant because the contract says Rossi had to teach them/provide any and all support necessary for them to be able to make all of the E-Cat IP work for themselves.

    I would be eager to see what would happen if someone asked Rossi whether IH ever expressed they were having difficulty replicating his results or asked for his assistance in helping them make the reaction work prior to the conclusion of the 1 year test and his filing of a lawsuit. My guess is it will be met with lawyer-mandated silence.

95. The scenario described is plausible though not necessarily likely. One error: The report date is given as March 29, 2016. The date that is effective in the contract is when it is delivered to IH. If we assume that was the delivery date, the payment was due five “working days” after the report was provided. That is not “five days.” Five working days after March 29 is April 5. So, if due, the payment was delinquent April 6. The suit was filed April 4.

    I conclude that Rossi knew he wasn’t going to be paid and prepared for that and then actually jumped the gun.

    IH has some possible outs. As interpreted, the contract seems naive. It is easily conceivable that IH concluded, early on, that something was fishy and wanted out, this would indeed explain the delay. This is rapidly becoming something heavier than the usual Rossi game, he said, she said.

    Depending on underlying facts, which I certainly don’t know, IH may respond by alleging fraud. And that could become a criminal matter.

    To my mind, the possibility that IH ends up getting stuck for $90 million seems very unlikely. However, if Rossi did act in good faith and if the test was not impeachable, IH might end up paying something.

96. Investor – My memory may be faulty but as I recall it Cherokee did NOT invest in IH. In fact I think this is one of Rossi’s complaints – that initially he was being told it would be Cherokee who were putting up funds but at the last moment this changed. As I recall it was $12 million raised from individuals initially that went into IH. And then Woodford got involved…Well that’s how I remember it.

97. I think that what Investor is saying seems plausible but there some things that don’t add up. If IH never could substantiate any of Rossis claims they should have ended the 1 year test and made a press release that Rossis ecat doesn’t work and walked away before it could get into this mess.

    The only scenario I can see that would fit all of the know parts of the story is that ecat works and Rossi is a brilliant inventor but not a good businessman. Rossi and IH signs the contract but they have different understandings about how the contract regulates the IP. IH believe they have full access to all and future ecat IP but that is not how Rossi understand it. So when IH starts to most likely in there view rightfully use the IP for other projects Rossi gets angry and realize that the only way to get the control back of the IP is to stop informing IH on how his ecat can have cop 50 when the IH ecats only have perhaps max cop 6. On top of that Rossi invents the EcatX and show it to the IH representative in the Florida test site. IH realize that there low cop ecat is pretty much worthless. Since Rossi is unreasonable the only leverage that IH have to play is not to pay and to publicly discredit Rossi.

    I’m not saying that this how it must be. It also still could be that Rossi is a fraud.

98. @Thomas The idea that IH has money is incorrect AFAIK. IH is a vehicle created by Cherokee to invest in Rossi’s claims. They would not have $89m sitting in their bank account. Cherokee would have seeded them with $12m or so to cover the initial costs, and then sat back and waited to see what happened.

    Claims that IH has any assets outside what was needed for this initial period does not gel with how these type of ventures are typically funded. No fund like Cherokee would leave $89m sitting on the books of a vehicle like IH ‘just in case’. It’s far too risky and cash inefficient.

99. @MY – I don’t think IH will fold. The have a lot of money and will be the main LENR investor for years to come.

    “wording in IH statement”

    What do you expect them to say? “We were chumps and believed Rossi’s 6 independent tests when in fcat they were all rigged”. In any case they don’t KNOW that. They just known that the positive results Rossi gets are not acheivable by them.

    They have to tread a line here – because there money – and their mission – is to invest in LENR. This is one investment that did not work. It is so embarassing just because much higher profile than the otehrs and what has persuaded otehrs to come on board.

100. Josh G – I agree with the points you make. There may be an explanation for the wording of IH’s statement but so far they haven’t provided one and I can’t think of a good explanation for the way they have phrased it – except for something more in line with the Rossi/Lewans view.

101. @Daniel, I agree. Rossi’s lawsuit doesn’t make much sense. But that’s pretty standard for Rossi. His lawyers are obviously very unfamiliar with this area of law and probably just saw it as a quick paycheck.

     Plenty of entrepreneurs get away with fraud. I’ve met a CEO who pocketed $300m and was never really prosecuted. He is still a CEO today. Rossi will probably get away with his small time fraud, despite his odd behavior.

     @Josh, you said “One would also have expected them to give back all the investors money and issue a very different press release regarding this fraudulent technology and how they’d been had, also disowning other companies and people they’ve invested in.”.

     That is crazy talk. Show me a single case in the last two decades where a fund has done this. It just doesn’t happen.

102. Hi all

     In reply to Mitch

     Rossi already proved the E-Cat works to IH’s satisfaction, in fact to the tune of $10 million of IH’s satisfaction using the independent engineer IH decided was right for the job.

     Rossi then continued to use the Engineer that IH insisted on.

     Kind Regards Walker

103. @josh, you completely misunderstand how funds like Cherokee, investors like Woodford and investments like IH operate. What you are suggesting should happen never happens, for the reasons I outlined in my comment below yours.

     Why in their right mind would Cherokee care about the $11m? That is a sunk cost to them. Look up the sunk cost fallacy. Investors do not do stupid things like that. That’s why Cherokee is managing two billion dollars.

104. Well Investor, on that basis what is Rossi the Scammer worried about. He’s collected over $10 million and knows there will be no comeback. Why take it to court? Doesn’t make sense either, does it?

     Mary Yugo – No I don’t accept that. All new energy technologies I know of have been tested in pilot operations for an extended period. There is nothing odd about that or indeed tying further payments to a successful pilot operation.

105. @maryyugo

     I will agree you are right when IH returns the $50 million that Woodford Capital invested on the basis of the E-cat I.P. and gives up on pursuing its many patents based on the E-cat and closes down its new LENR R&D center and issues a press release disavowing the E-cat.

     IH’s press release stated that: “Industrial Heat has worked for over three years to substantiate the results claimed by Mr. Rossi from the E-Cat technology – all without success.”

     You are interpreting this to mean that they realized the 24 hour test was a fraud only long after the fact. Presumably it was after they got Woodford and the Chinese government to invest millions in their technology, otherwise IH was engaged in an even bigger fraud than Rossi. Presumably it was also after they filed all those patents and after they (recently) opened up a LENR R&D center in North Carolina with Antonio La Gatta of TSEM, otherwise they are just throwing money to the wind. So by process of elimination, it must have been around the time when they released that press release a few weeks ago. Is that what you think? It doesn’t make any sense.

     If that was the case, one would have expected them, at minimum, to immediately sever all ties with Rossi (disowning him, essentially) and to sue him for the $11.5 million of which he defrauded them (according to you). They would also have had to go into MAJOR damage control mode. One would also have expected them to give back all the investors money and issue a very different press release regarding this fraudulent technology and how they’d been had, also disowning other companies and people they’ve invested in.

     But that’s not what we’ve seen at all. As usual, you are wrong, and your analysis is handicapped by your inability to examine the situation from multiple perspectives. You’ve got your narrative, you’ve had it from day one, and you will warp any set of events to fit your preconceived notion of what is going on. If Rossi is a fraud, then IH is continuing to perpetuate the same fraud but on a much larger scale. Surely you must see that’s the case.

106. @ Mats, you wrote:
     – “experiences in a fairly corrupt power game country like Italy”
     Maybe, with this respect, the world is just one and the same Country.

     – “it’s interesting to note how Rossi has systematically used his blog and the Internet to spread public knowledge on his activities, challenges and progress.”
     Yes, it’s really interesting, because since the first day the JoNP’s Board of Advisers included one very special member of a special US Department, which is expected to know much more things than the normal people.

     – “Some suggest IH was forced by the US government, in order to keep the technology in the US, free from a foreign inventor, but realistically in that case, I believe the government would gladly have paid $89M to keep things quite and clean.”
     If someone really whishes to include the USG in this affair, it’s maybe more realistic to think that they forced someone to give their support to the ecat fiction, for keeping the farce going.

     “We’ll find out one day, maybe.”
     Whoever, a judge or a journalist, will try to make light in this story, should first find the right answers to the questions and doubts exposed by Krivit 6 years ago:

     http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg38052.html
     http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg38061.html

107. Much of the speculation here and on ECW is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how venture and equity funds like Cherokee operate. Cherokee is a $2.2 billion private equity fund. They will invest in or create dozens or hundreds of companies. The Limited Partners in the fund (the investors who commit $2.2b to Cherokee, like Woodford and other family offices) are sophisticated investors and understand the risk profile. That $2.2b is not just sitting in a bank account. It mostly consists of a paper commitment from the Limited Partners and the fund does a regular ‘capital call’ when they need funds for a venture like IH.

     Cherokee and the Limited Partners fully expect a large percentage of their investments to fail. The typical profile for funds is that one in ten investments make a spectacular return, another two or three make some kind of return and the rest are write-offs. This is absolutely typical for this business.

     When an investment like IH fails, there is almost never a civil lawsuit. The fund and the partners accept failure as a risk of doing business. Even in cases of outright fraud by an entrepreneur who took money from the fund, the fund will not waste their time and money in court, because there is usually nothing of value to recover and they don’t want the bad publicity.

     Sure, the funds do their due diligence, but their are plenty of bad investments and fraud. You just never hear of them. The funds sweep them under the carpet silently and they vanish, along with the companies and the entrepreneurs.

     Some famous examples. Kleiner Perkins invested millions in EEstor which never panned out despite a decade of work and was arguably fraudulent. No lawsuit, they quietly dumped the stock years later. A long list of funds invested over $30m in Pixelon, which was an outright fraud by a con artist working under a false name. No lawsuit either. Entellium defrauded multiple funds for over $20m. No lawsuit. BLP is another company that has burned through tens of millions in a twenty year period and never produced a result. No lawsuit AFAIK.

     You will occasionally see a lawsuit from individual investors (not funds) who don’t know any better and/or have stupid lawyers. But almost never from a fund.

     The likely legal action that *does* arise in these cases is when the SEC or law enforcement steps in and criminally prosecutes for fraud. In the case of Pixelon and Entellium, the con artists went to jail. Limited Partners almost never sue investment funds unless there is a clear indication of direct fraud on the part of the fund, which there is not in the case of Cherokee because they did some level of due diligence on Rossi. The only recourse of the Limited Partners in a fund like Cherokee is to refuse all future capital calls i.e. they back out of the fund. This certainly happens but it is also rare.

     It is very clear from the actions of Cherokee and IH that they saw Rossi as a long shot bet. They invested $11m in it (which is a tiny fraction of the $2,2b they have under management). Rossi failed to substantiate his claims, and IH is walking away from the deal.

     The more you look at the supposed independent tests and Rossi’s strange stories about them, it would be irresponsible for IH to pay Rossi the $89m. The ‘expert’ is not credible and the ‘customer’ appears to be a shell company created by Rossi’s lawyer. The ‘factory’ in which the test took place appears to be an industrial storage unit. It also sounds like the people who worked for Rossi are now employed by IH, and some of them have perhaps come clean about their true impressions of Rossi.

     For Rossi to claim that “IH invested in competitors” is complete insanity. A $2.2b fund like Cherokee would invest in dozens of different energy companies. It’s a red herring.

     So to summarize:

     – Cherokee has already written off their $11m IH investment. They will let IH fold and continue investing their $2.2b elsewhere

     – Cherokee won’t sue Rossi or anyone. The Limited Partners in Cherokee will not sue anyone either.

     – Rossi’s lawsuit will fail. IH itself is a shell investment company that almost certainly doesn’t have $89m.

     – Rossi’s lawyer has been practicing law for three years and also does family law. They are D grade. There is no way they will prevail over Cherokee or anyone else in court.

     – If Rossi is lucky, Darden doesn’t have a friend at the SEC or DA’s office.

     Source of info: I’ve worked in this industry for decades

108. In fact, please note. IH don’t say e-cat technology does not work. They say that in 3 years of work they have not been able to substantiate Rossi’s claims. You see, it might still work 🙂

109. It will I’m sure be presented as a more guarded thing. IH will say they were very enthusiastic about the possibilities based on the positive test results but that more rigorous testing through up problems. That is all true. I doubt they will say Rossi is a scammer, just that results that appeaeed strong turned out to have subtlke scientific flaws. Keep the debate about different science interpretation of evidence and there is no necessary accusation of scam.

     They will then vigorously defend the issues about IP. I’m not sure how that will go, except that I guess Rossi not being able to show his stuff really works will make it difficult for him to claim IP, and invalidate his patents (and also IH patents).

110. Definition of Occam’s razor. : a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities. Unfortunately fraud is the simplest explanation:(

111. Daniel, no 365 day test or any test of longevity is needed to encourage widespread acceptance of the ecat. In a real world where the ecat was working, Rossi would NEVER be manufacturing it by himself! Ask yourself what background in manufacturing Rossi has. Answer: none. He has never made or sold any product ever anywhere. For that matter, he has never succeeded in anything, anywhere, ever. except to fool people.

     If the ecat worked, it would have been proven to work by simple repetitions and independent replications of Levi’s test of early 2011 on an early ecat. Then, Rossi would have easily obtained a patent based on the test results which he could show to the patent office. After that, Rossi would have offers in the billions, not millions, from companies all over the world, for licences to manufacture the ecat, something they could do better than Rossi for sure and by far. Consider what Elon Musk or Jeff Bazos, GE or GM would do with such a license. It makes IH and Rossi look like rank amateurs.

     Or remember, Rossi claimed to have sold a megawatt plant to the military in 2011 and to have received a dozen orders for more. Why didn’t he collect longevity data from *that* customer. How about it’s because the customer never existed, the so-called NATO colonel was hired by Rossi, Rossi never sold anything to the military? Or so you really think after all these years, there would have been nothing heard from the military while Rossi blabbed whatever he wanted from his blog? No, nothing Rossi says or does makes sense when you look closely. It never has.

     Sure, eventually it would be necessary to conduct life tests on ecats. But it would be done in a lab with accelerated test methods and mathematics– NEVER by having the inventor squat in a silly shipping container with a friend of his and his attorney being both the customer and the monitor.

112. The scam theory is perhaps more straightforward than the Rossi defence but it still seems open to me. IH have not yet explained IF they reached the conclusion the E Cat technology did not work (their statement about “results” is far from clear) or WHEN, if they did, that occurred or WHY they reached that conclusion, if indeed they did. Also they have not explained how the timing of such a conclusion (if it was reached) relates to the timing of the investment funds they raised and any subsequent actions (on Rossi’s version it appears they just let the 350 day test proceed). I don’t know why Mary Yugo thinks a 350 day test would not be necessary. For an energy technology, it needs to be reliable as well as real. So I would expect a pilot test in an operational setting.

113. Well, let’s sum up your idea as I’ve understood it.

     1) The E-Cat is working.
     2) IH has ALL the IPR in its hands.
     3) IH has already paid 11,5M$ to Rossi.
     4) The 1 year test resulted in a full success, with a COP >40.

     So, all in all IH has the magic wand for reliable, cheap energy from here to centuries in the future. And -more importantly- ALL the proofs the wand is working.

     Now, according to your idea, to spare a ridiculous sum of 89M$ (ridiculous because of the future, CERTAIN revenues) they risk a trial?

     Let me say it doesn’t work logically, especially if you are sure the E-Cat is what Rossi swear it is.

     My 89 EuroCents…

114. Mats,

     You seem to be twisting things a lot to support your pro-Rossi stance. I remember at the time the Lugano excess heat was shown to be an artifact (not probably – but definitely – a mistake made by the profs) you said you would wait and see.

     The simplest answer is that Darden and Vaughn behaved like typical LENR supporters (which Darden was). They had 6 apparently good reports showing Rossi stuff worked. Their (pro-LENR) scientific experts would be positive – sure, there were some issues, but it all looked good. So they were on a major roll and got massive investment (much more that $89M we here).

     Why on earth would they now lie and say Rossi’s stuff does not work if it does? It is immensely embarrassing for them. They are in crisis management mode. Their investors may consider suing them, though I’d guess they invested on identical evidence making the same mistakes. It deprives them of a very valuable license for working tech in US, China, Arabia, Russia (everywhere except Europe). Vaughn is a sincere committed Christian. Would he lie about this?

     BTW substantiate means that they can repeat Rossi’s tests. Not that they can make a working reactor themselves. So there is no missing secret sauce.

     Whereas for Rossi to respond by attacking the friends who have turned traitor on him is his character. And for him to hope that people will go on believing his stuff works is his experience. Remember he emerged with money and no problems from the TEG stuff.

     Now: why does it take IH so long to come to this decision? They were positive 6 months ago. That is those 6 reports, and the positive scientific evaluation of them. Once you have bought into that you will also believe the emerging 1 year test data. And to backtrack and decide that it is all wrong is a very difficult thing to do. But something that you must in the end do if your tests using protocols different from rossi continue to fail. You will try for a long time, getting Rossi’s help, thinking you have got the secret sauce wrong. But once you start to doubt Rossi’s integrity the worms come out of the can. The reports all are weak. Different scientists will point out that Penon is totally unsuited to write experimental reports making basic mistakes that no competent or half-competent person would do.

     The above interpretation is 100% compatible with all facts and easy to believe. Your interpretation goes against all we know of the character, and the interests, of IH.

115. Plausible scenario Mats, time will tell us if it’s true. And possibly less time than we imagine – at least I hope so.

116. But why would IH want to get out of the deal, if the deal was so advantageous to them? Your story is hanging on the assumption that IH did want to get rid of Rossi, but there seems to be no reason at all to do that.

117. I think the main problem here is the messy patent situation and the lack of understanding of the actual LENR process. It is new science and alot of the patents issued presumably will be able to be circumvented when a better understanding of the physics is achieved. This is a very a unstable situation.

     Industrial Heat probably understand this and that they could use LENR’s ambiguity to gain control of the field. Also could be the reason why they wanted to invest in multiple LENR inventors/companies.

     Who would want to be merely a licensee of the technology when you have an opportunity to be one of the main companies in control of the whole field? I mean we are talking about the future primary world energy source.

118. Hi Mats,

     This latest posting clearly crosses the line into one-sided speculation/propaganda. I am so disappointed as I had viewed you as an independent objective truth-seeker in this saga. I now understand why you have ignored my earlier pleas to use your investigative journalist skills to determine the reality behind the customer’s identity.

119. Here’s a suggestion for a deal between Rossi and the San Francisco Exploratorium museum. Or, for that matter, between Rossi and any science museum in the world.

     Rossi agrees to deliver an eCat to the Exploratorium, with the understanding that it will be treated by the Exploratorium as a black box and kept behind plexiglas. The Exploratorium gets to control all electricity sent past the plexiglas, and can measure heat output to their heart’s delight. To avoid any license or legal issues, the delivery is a loan for five years, at no cost to the Exploratorium besides a commitment from them to provide and meter electric power.

     The Exploratorium wins either way — they can use the eCat as the centerpiece on an exhibit about (their choice) the difficulty of fusion, fraud and science, standards of proof, the difficulties inventors have in proving their inventions, whatever. If, after a month, they see excess heat, they can change the name of their exhibit to “Come See The Salvation of the World.”

     And since Rossi has already proven to his own satisfaction that the eCat has a COP around 50, Rossi can just sit back and watch the Exploratorium prove his honesty to the public.

120. Mats, I think it is much simpler than that. Rossi and his associates and friends were able to fool IH *again* into thinking the ecat works when in reality, it doesn’t. That is why the 24 hour test was passed.

     Rossi then obtained the contract to perform the ridiculous and unnecessary 350 day test. His absurd choice of “customer” and ERV, to which IH inexplicably agreed, reported that the test was a resounding success.

     But IH doesn’t believe it because they have finally realized they were deceived. They refuse to pay the $89M. It’s true that the contract is based on acceptance by the ERV and customer, therefore Rossi thinks he can sue based on the acceptance alone.

     But IH will claim in court, and I bet they can prove it, that:

     a) the customer is a sham and is really working for Rossi

     b) Rossi obtained the favorable test results by fraud

     c) Rossi obtained the contract by fraud, which, by the way, invalidates the contract.

     d) The ecat does not work.

     Rossi will then have to prove to the court’s satisfaction, that the ecat works, most likely using experts provided by the court. That will be fun because they won’t be pushovers for bad tests like observers and so-called experts have been in the part.

     Rossi might be hoping that IH will settle out of court so that their negligence in doing due process and proper tests won’t be revealed. That could possibly happen. In that case, Rossi will escape with some money until the share holders sue or the state intervenes with prosecution for fraud.

     LENR research will have been severely damaged by Defkalion and Rossi, and probably will be further inhibited when it turns out, as seems likely, that Brillouin, Miley and Swartz have nothing.

     Also, what Hans-Göran Branzell said. If Rossi wanted acclaim and untold fortune, all he needed to do was have an “untouchable” (unimpeachable) organization like ORNL, CERN or Sandia, Cal Tech or MIT, test the ecat. That could have been done in weeks, not five years. And it could have been done with the ecat that Levi supposedly tested in early 2011 with very successful, if irreproducible, results. No need to wait for hot cats or megawatt plants.

     So can you, Mats, explain why this long test was necessary for Rossi to prove that the ecat works? Can you also explain why IH won’t pay $89M if they really think the megawatt plant works? It, and the related technology, would be worth billions or even trillions if they were real.

121. Hypothesis? Why would anyone need to hypothesize about what this all means.

     The end game. Maybe more fun ahead.

122. mats, why the jumping through hoops to defend rossi?

     much more likely: rossi failed to deliver to ih on multiple levels. rossi would again not agee to the test conditions at ih and decided to do an independent test only he controlled. rossi had this again faked test written up in a report only rossi and the internet conspiratardocracy characterizes as independent. finally rossi claims unreasonable success, again on nothing independently verifiable.

     rossi’s play has now become so obvious and so contrived that it is putting everyone to sleep. snore, way beyond sleep inducing.

     we beg you, please, now, go do some valid journalism and stop feeding the ennui machine.

123. I’m sorry, but this has gone well beyond ridiculous. 14:53 has it exactly right. With $10 million in hand, absolutely anyone who was in possession of a magic bean would have been able to prove that the bean grew.

124. Much has been said on other forums about how many facts of the case make IH appear either grossly incompetent or deceitful or both.

     I’d just like to say two things. 1) It’s a shame Rossi signed such a horrible deal way back when – giving IH tremendous control over the ecat IP and licenses. And 2) I hope Rossi really is able to go to market quickly without IH’s support or money.

125. Mats, I think your analysis are very plausible.
     The only two things I do not understand is why IH let this go out of hand and why Rossi does not has prepared and set up an independent test to take away the critic voiced by many scientists.

     I consider IH a professional investor and in my opinion it is poor handling to not be able to make an agreement with Rossi when they saw how it was going. They must have understood the outcome of the test at least six month before it ended. I assume that Rossi is hard to negotiate with so maybe they tried but saw no way to reach agreement. However, that does not make any sense either as with a COP of 50 money should not be an issue. To make sure to keep their good license agreement even $89M should be looked upon as a bargain. This outcome does not make any sense to me.
     Another thing that bothers me is IH presumed transfer of IP to a Chinese entity. Due to lack of trade agreement between China and the US it is real hard to make agreements, which bind the Chinese. I think that kills the conspiracy thought you brought up in the end of your analysis. If the US government has any say in how IH should handle this they would hardly support a transfer of IP to China.

     I think we are missing an important ingredient to make this soup taste right.

126. Mats, could you also explain why Rossi doesn’t want to convince the world that his stuff works. For the one year test why didn’t he engage an untouchable organization to perform a truly independent verification of the Container-Cat? At least it could not have been for lack of money. All we see all the time are his pals and buddies. It is getting boring.

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