Neutrinovoltaics: Decentralised Home Supply

Neutrinovoltaics as a standard small power plant

Schematic diagram of a supply system with a gas-fired CHP unit using combined heat and power. (Source: Buderus)

Example of a supply system with a gas-fired CHP unit using combined heat and power. (Source: Buderus)

Gas as a store could be replaced by neutrinovoltaics – that is, by the use of natural forms of radiation. A CO2-free, comprehensive energy supply would thus be born. The gross output of a Neutrino Power Cube based on the film stacks would then be converted into 220 V AC via a transformer, with the roughly 7 kW of gross power yielding at least about 5 kW of net power as a base. In 24 hours this output corresponds to 120 kWh. This means that a considerable surplus of energy is produced in the household, even in single-family homes or flats. This would in turn create a new “feed-in” option into the grid: with the help of the “eternal light”, energy is collected and made available to other consumers.

This new CHP variant is part of climate stabilisation: by producing one’s own electricity for personal consumption and as decentralised feed-in to the grid, the baseload is stabilised so that the usual large power stations can be replaced within a generation (30 years). Installed decentrally, the “eternal light” becomes a renewable, inexpensive new basis for baseload-capable energy, so that local grids take on a new, special significance. Electricity produced locally means fewer losses in transport over transmission lines.

Since neutrinovoltaics produces electricity continuously, the grid could also plan with a possible feed-in. This form of renewable energy thus offers planning certainty for the first time, because energy is permanently available and can therefore be drawn on continuously.

Baseload energy could thus be reliably provided by decentralised small power plants. This would not only relieve large power stations but would eventually even make it possible to calculate when they can be shut down. That would then no longer be a political decision but one based on performance criteria – a turning point in energy supply.

At this point it makes sense to point out the new engineering way of thinking and working:

• With the increasing construction of decentralised small power plants and the feed-in of surplus electricity, baseloads in the grid can be recalculated.
• Switching large power stations can thus be calculated reliably and safely without outages being expected in grid structures.
• By feeding energy from small power plants into the grid, large consumers can also be supplied with inexpensive energy according to their requirements.
• Households – the population – become “small energy producers”, so that the main task of the energy companies becomes organising smarter grids with reliable control.
• The large producers of electricity become large distributors of the electricity from millions of producers with small power plants.
• This makes it possible, on the one hand, to guarantee renewable baseload energy and, on the other, gradually to organise energy production without CO2 problems and without nuclear waste. But wind and solar energy also remain integrated in this kind of supply and are an important part of the energy turning point.

Acknowledging the work on neutrinovoltaics

This article is based on work on neutrinos by Prof. Konstantin Meyl (German), Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr. Josef Gruber and others, which, developed further by Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Günter Krause with the kind support of the Neutrino Energy Group, was published in comprehensible popular-science language by Weltbuch Verlag in 2020.

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The contradictions between economy and ecology are bringing our planet to the brink of catastrophe unless we learn to provide energy in a form that helps gradually reduce the excess of pollutants. Nuclear power is not a good guide here, as its risks have become clear through recurring disasters. Burning coal and other substances for our energy needs is not the most intelligent or environmentally friendly solution either, and so-called renewable energies would be inexpensive and have what it takes to be a true alternative – if they were capable of supplying baseload, because we cannot yet control wind and sun.

The actually most effective and environmentally friendly alternative for generating energy has, so to speak, been flying around our ears for millions of years. Of course there were no humans then who could have made use of it; that only became interesting in 1912, when the Austrian Nobel Prize-winning physicist Victor Franz Hess discovered cosmic radiation.

This book with the mystical-sounding title “Das ewige Licht” (The eternal light) takes up what has surrounded us for hundreds of millions of years and raises a completely new approach to energy conversion. Until now, natural and also artificial radiation played no role in recent considerations of the energy industry and were rather scornfully dismissed. But it has been possible to develop combinations of materials on metallic surfaces that, for example, impede so-called neutrinos, as particles of cosmic radiation, as they fly through. The result is vibrations of atoms that can generate electricity permanently. Is this the new way to keep the “eternal light” shining forever? Or, put differently, is this the beginning of a new energy age?

Source: Weltbuch Verlag, 2020