You've got the same first impression I had, the promises seem too good to be true and the lack of investors is worrying. But after doing a careful background check and reading their history through I'm actually quite optimistic of their approach. There are valid reasons why investors are a bit shy of this approach. First of all Lerner is well known for going against the mainstream in astrophysics. I have to give him credit for this because at least to me it seems really worrying that according to prevalent theory 95% of our universe is made out of Dark Energy and Dark Matter - simply put stuff that we don't actually know anything about yet. As a plasma physicist he has been able to take a different perspective to astrophysics and this has lead for him to formulate his own quantitative theory based on observational evidence (this was done already in the 80's). His theory has been the only one able to successfully predict how plasma behaves in DPF devices and this is why he received initial funding by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab. Second thing that will definitely put VC's off is his refusal of selling controlling shares of the company. This is in fear of aggressive VC taking over later when the Phase I has been completed and scientific feasibility has been reached. Third thing that matters is their lack of marketing and PR skills (which you can see from miles off - just take a look at their website and presentations) and the miniature size of the experiment when compared to other approaches. There's an interesting discussion going on at tesla motors forums and it can shine some light on the investment side of things: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com...

The amount of heat released in the process is dependent of the type of fuel used. That's exactly why the Aneutronic approach that these guys are proposing is different. To quote Steven Cowley: "The holy grail of holy grails is proton-boron fusion,”. This means that instead of neutrons there are positively charged helium ions produced in the reaction which can be converted into electricity by electromagnetic means. Efficiency is very high and they circumvent the problem of extensive heating due to runaway neutrons (aneutronic=no neutrons). I think that this is truly innovative approach and orders of magnitude safer and cleaner if compared to mainstream approaches that are using Deuterium-Tritium fuel.

Pumped hydro is already used at least here in Scandinavian countries to storage the surplus energy produced by nuclear during night time. But there are also propositions of hydro-facilities that could be drilled into the ground and provide storage in smaller scales, for neighborhoods or small cities. Interesting talk about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

"Political trade offs" - that's exactly what we are talking about here - if we have to do "political trade offs" it means that we don't currently have the political will/the backing of general public. Why? Every scientist and engineer knows that we could/should be using more money on R&D - for example the realization of nuclear fusion would have almost incalculable benefits in the long run. It all comes down to this: "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” - Carl Sagan

They were originally funded by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab. Funding dried out in the Bush era when Nasa was taken off of the fusion business. So I think they do have merit but unfortunately government funds go to bigger projects like ITER and NIF. What comes to private investors, you have to take into consideration that Lerner has refused to sell controlling shares of the company - which always puts off investors. And as I've understood they are only crowdsourcing money for the new electrodes - they still have all the usual expenses to take care of due to keeping the lab operational and running and these come through "normal channels".

I just listened to a recent podcast where Lerner was interviewed (http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/) and it seems that they are only trying to crowdsource enough money for the new beryllium electrodes. To me the flexible campaign doesn't render the effort any more suspicious than it would be with a fixed goal. In fact just the opposite - it shows that whatever the result of the crowdfunding campaign - they are probably going to carry on anyway and buy the new electrodes. In ant case most of their funding is coming through investors and that's how they pay for the normal operating expenses.

I would have to give some merit to Lerner for his consistent effort with this device from the early 90's to the present day. The "never-before-seen" interaction is called "The quantum magnetic field effect" which seems to be the key point of Lerner's own quantitative theory and one of the main reasons why he had funding from the Nasa in the first place. Although there are some pretty considerable challenges (check out the onion shaped photovoltaic collector) further ahead in the engineering phase, I think that this project and Lerner's original theory is interesting enough to deserve the funding and therefore also completion of the scientific phase of their experiment.

Think about the legal consequences if the concept comes out as unworkable. Also offering something like that would imply scam more than anything.