Free energy or hoax?

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by retina

So what they claim is that 100% of the battery power goes into heat/noise/etc. and the extra power from the pick-up coils is free. But the output power figures are so tiny that it is hard to prove anything. A slight mis-calibration (deliberate or not) in any part of the measuring equipment could swing your figures from OU (over unity) to UU (under unity) very easily. Figures like 100% input and 101% output, where 100% is heat/noise/stuff and the extra 1% is the "free" current from the pick-up coils.

100% from battery, 1% from magic pixie dust, 100-101% into head/sound/etc. and 0-1% into something useful sounds like far below unity to me. I mean, it may break the laws of physics, but not in a useful way.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by retina

But here is where the FE claim is; The pick-up coils on the outside induce no feedback (i.e no counter EMF at all) into the rotor, thus any load on the pick-ups does not alter the rotor load.

Wow! Couldn't this mean that Steorn-type (i.e., whatever's special about them) pick-up coils could sip off a little power from any electric motor, without having any effect on the motor or its load?

I could put one next to my refrigerator, which surely has cast-off power to spare, and run the hot-air popcorn popper, or at least the clock radio, off it. Shucks, I could just have it recharging all my rechargeable batteries, releasing my solar cells in the west window for other uses.

It's almost like those schemes for pulling energy from Earth's magnetic field -- except that it has to be near some electric motor, but there are plenty of those around.

Strangely enough they never ever put a load on the coils to actually prove anything.

Oh, pshaw -- they'll figure out how to do that soon enough -- by year-end, undoubtedly.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Wow! Couldn't this mean that Steorn-type (i.e., whatever's special about them) pick-up coils could sip off a little power from any electric motor, without having any effect on the motor or its load??

It's almost like those schemes for pulling energy from Earth's magnetic field -- except that it has to be near some electric motor.

I could imagine something working like that (siphoning off some of the otherwise-wasted energy). But that's not free energy; at best it's just an increase to the efficiency of the device to which it's attached. You couldn't just have them anywhere, and they couldn't be used to produce an unlimited amount of energy.

But I don't imagine for an instant that Steorn's device works like that; it seems like it's designed not to produce energy but the liberate VC dollars.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

I could imagine something working like that (siphoning off some of the otherwise-wasted energy). But that's not free energy; at best it's just an increase to the efficiency of the device to which it's attached.

Oh, no, no, no -- Steorn pick-ups have no effect on their ... uh ... what-do-you-call-a-parasite's-host! They said so. So it wouldn't be doing anything -- positive or negative -- to my refrigerator.

You couldn't just have them anywhere,

Of course not -- has to be next to an electric motor, silly.

and they couldn't be used to produce an unlimited amount of energy.

Well, of course not -- the Steorn coils pick up only 1% of the host motor's power. So, this isn't going to save the world by eliminating global warming or something. It's just a simple 1% increase, not some miracle hoax.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Oh, no, no, no -- Steorn pick-ups have no effect on their ... uh ... what-do-you-call-a-parasite's-host! They said so. So it wouldn't be doing anything -- positive or negative -- to my refrigerator.

Right, but (as you say below) it would be limited by the device it's powered by. So although it's not affecting ("so they say") the device, it would be giving only a portion of its energy back -- just like a more efficient device, essentially.

[retina]

Oh, I forgot to mention this: that part of their claim is that the spinning rotor does not change its motion, i.e. they say it doesn't slow down when the pick-ups are in place. Although, once again, they never actually measure or prove that in any way.

Assuming that the 1% output thing is accurate (although even that is unproven) then I expect this is happening: The rotor slows down by 0.5% (and outputs less heat/sound etc.) and the input current goes up by 0.5%. Both these changes being unnoticed by human observers since the changes are very small. Totalling the 1% output that they claim is free. And remember that the rotor has no load other than its own friction to work against.

So we have about 13 zillion claims of various things happening and zero proof of anything. So many holes to fill, I wonder if they have a few spare boys around to stick their fingers in the dam?

[ewmayer]

On the at-least-thermodynamically-possible front, Fortune's Brainstorm Tech column has 3 questions for Bloom Energy:

Bloom Box: Segway or savior?: Three critical questions Bloom Energy must answer to succeed.

I think their objection to Bloom's $3000-per-household cost estimate (based on 1 KW average electricity usage) is a little over the top - they claim 10 KW is closer to the peak usage of the average U.S. home, which may be true, but that does not mean one would need ten 1 KW-rated Bloom boxes installed, for the following reasons:

1. For houses already on the regular grid (i.e. most of them) the Bloom boxes could be set up just like a typical solar or wind-energy install, in which peak-demand spikes which exceed the generating capacity of the alt-energy install simply tap into the regular grid, and any excess power gets pumped back into the grid, earning the installee some actual money;

2. In colder climates,the Bloom boxes could be set up to also help heat the owner's home, i.e. one could add heating-cost savings to the economics.

3. While an average unoptimized-energy-usage U.S.home might suck10 KW at peak, one with even modest energy-saving setup (efficient appliances, CFLs for lighting, etc) is highly unlikely to come close to that.

4. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average electricity consumption of U.S.households is in fact only a tad over 1 KW:

In 2007, the average monthly residential electricity consumption was 936 kilowatt hours (kWh).

At roughly 30*24 = 720 hours per month, that translates to an average usage of 1.3 KW. Throw in a half-dozen CFLs in the the most-commonly-lit areas of the house and one newer energy-efficient appliance in place of an older one, and you're at or below 1 KW.

[cheesehead]

Yet another scam: http://www.blacklightpower.com/

From http://www.blacklightpower.com/theory/theory.shtml:

Blacklight technology is based on the innovative Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics (GUT-CP) which is the theory that classical physical laws (Maxwell's Equations, Newton's Laws, Special and General Relativity) must hold on all scales.

In other words, they're declaring that quantum mechanics isn't right, after all: There are electron orbitals with energies below the ground state!

(Richard Feynman is rolling over in his grave -- rolling over laughing, that is.)

[Random Poster]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

In other words, they're declaring that quantum mechanics isn't right, after all:

Not only that, but they claim that Newtonian gravity and General Relativity, two mutually incompatible theories, are true at the same time.

Originally Posted by cheesehead

(Richard Feynman is rolling over in his grave -- rolling over laughing, that is.)

Indeed.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Random Poster

Not only that, but they claim that Newtonian gravity and General Relativity, two mutually incompatible theories, are true at the same time.

Indeed.

Be very, very careful when making claims like that. For a start, they claim "Newton's Laws" and Special and General Relativity are compatible with their new physics. No explicit mention of Newtonian gravity there. This could be written off as nit-picking easily enough and I will make no attempt to defend that particular argument

The important reason for taking care is that Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics are compatible in the limit of weak gravity and low velocities. Einstein was guided in his creation of relativity by this compatibility requirement for the very good reason that Newton's laws are an excellent description of much of mechanics and gravity.

Along these lines, SR and GR are incompatible theories in the sense you seem to use that term. SR is the flat geometry limit of GR and does not make good predictions of the behaviour of bodies in strong gravitational fields.

Paul

[Random Poster]

Originally Posted by xilman

Be very, very careful when making claims like that. For a start, they claim "Newton's Laws" and Special and General Relativity are compatible with their new physics. No explicit mention of Newtonian gravity there.

I don't see what they could mean by "Newton's Laws" except his law of gravity.

Originally Posted by xilman

The important reason for taking care is that Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics are compatible in the limit of weak gravity and low velocities.

So? The statements "1/x is zero" and "1/x is nonzero" are "compatible" in the sense that one is the limit of the other as x goes to infinity, but it would be absurd to claim that both are true at the same time.

Originally Posted by xilman

Along these lines, SR and GR are incompatible theories in the sense you seem to use that term.

Not so. If we impose the condition that space (or rather spacetime) is empty, SR and GR are exactly the same. This is not the case with GR and Newtonian gravity; even if we restrict them to theories of completely empty space, they are still fundamentally different.