Free energy

[Queso]

"Back in the early 1900s a famous scientist named Nikola Tesla invented “FREE ENERGY” by manipulating the ionosphere. Ok, lightning is negative ions in the sky and positive ions in the ground well, he made a massive antenna in Colorado Springs that pushed out millions of negative ions in the sky and positive ions pushed into the ground making lightning strike the tower... All that energy transferred down into massive capacitors and the rest of the energy that couldnt be contained was spent off into the earth. That prouced enough to power the entire US (Now it would take 3-4 with all the extra electricity use). Think about it, if they gave us all free energy, the cost of everything we would ever have to buy would be dramatically decreased in price and General Electric would loose trillions of dollars up to this point."

 

Read this in an essay online. How true is this?

[Fatstep]

Although I am far too inexperienced to know the math behind this, I highly doubt that 4 antennas could power the United States

 

I n 1995, the U.S., with a population of 263 million people, used an estimated 95,300 PJ of primary energy.

 

World Energy Council 17th Congress

 

What that is saying is, each antenna could produce ~24,000 PetaJouels annually, that sounds a bit farfetched :P

[kmcolo]

Amazon.com: The Tesla Papers: Nikola Tesla on Free Energy & Wireless Transmission of Power: Books: Nikola Tesla,David Hatcher Childress http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Papers-Nikola-Wireless-Transmission/dp/0932813860

[ErlyRisa]

uhhh how many times have I heard this one!!!

 

--if it's so great build one!! -it's not even that hard... dig a hole and bury an insulated aluminium water tank - fill it and wire it up, whalla capacitor with antenna - now make sure that when you finally do get a lighting strike (probablity approaching that maybe your grandgrandgrandgrandgrand child will observe the capacitor fill and finally get to use it) that your not in the vicinity of the tank!!;)

 

another intersting idea, which I do hold merit for is alternative wind generator....

 

instead of collecting wind energy via a turbine/prop, why not use the principals of static electricity.

 

build your roof out of styrofoam and wire it to some electronics which can concvert high voltage to a usable current - everytime wind blws 'fresh' atoms over your roof you will be charging the styrofoam.

 

--approximation of E available...

 

I can lift a 10mm 1/2 sheet (1.2x.12 m) of stryofoam with approx 1 hand to a height of 1m in 1sec before E is lost. now I dunno it porbably weighs 100grams? so that should be able to drive, uhh accounting for loses (1/2) than it should be able to run the truntable in your microwave for one second? - the qestion is, how long did it take for the styrofoam to get charged? - and would that time be better spent propelling a turbine? -the only advantage I can see is that in low wind conditions it could work better than a propellor/dyno. -the main disadvantage, I don't know of a material that can handle outdoor conditons and still be viably statically charged. (consider building house with 'tunneling' of outdoor conditions to foam interior layer?

 

--oh about chaneling power through air - it's been done... expect your computer mice to be baterryless soon enough (hopefully electronic noise can be overcome)

 

PS - a good invention would be foam panelling and a house construction that keeps the foam in good condition. The foam panelling would have integrated circuitry that channels power wirelessly to a main conduit built into the house along the walls.

 

eg. foamwalls in contact with PVC pipes running along walls. The conduit would be insulated from the rest of the house. The PVC conduit would then 'ground' to a main capacitator resovoir, where the static E gets converted to useable power., better yet setup 'honeycomb' mini resovirs as a part of the foam panelling, which automatically 'scale' the static E to a slightly more desireable level. even better, use the insulation section of the walls to have a material that also helps with storage.

 

--actually come to think of it, the best bet is to just make the entire home out of foam - but to design it in a electrical cell network. and just insulate the occupants from the electrocution!! -who cares about the visitors on the outside!!! -- consider the effincieny of drawing charge away and 'dioding' it.

[Janus]

"Back in the early 1900s a famous scientist named Nikola Tesla invented “FREE ENERGY” by manipulating the ionosphere. Ok, lightning is negative ions in the sky and positive ions in the ground well, he made a massive antenna in Colorado Springs that pushed out millions of negative ions in the sky and positive ions pushed into the ground making lightning strike the tower... All that energy transferred down into massive capacitors and the rest of the energy that couldnt be contained was spent off into the earth. That prouced enough to power the entire US (Now it would take 3-4 with all the extra electricity use). Think about it, if they gave us all free energy, the cost of everything we would ever have to buy would be dramatically decreased in price and General Electric would loose trillions of dollars up to this point."

 

Read this in an essay online. How true is this?

 

Let's see:

There are 20,000,000 lightning strikes a year in the US,

Each strike averages 500,000,000 joules of energy.

This equals 10,000,000,000,000,000 joules or 10PJ of energy from lightning strikes in the US per year.

 

From the site listed, the US used 95,300 PJ a year.

 

Which means that even if we could capture the energy from every lightning strike in the US, we would still only come up with 1/100 of a percent of the total US energy uage for that year.