"Free energy" devices/concepts/technology.

[slimmouse]

If possible, please post both the article and the link. Being a paranoid conspiracy theorist that I am, I truly believe that there are people who hate good ideas.


There are many new forms of alternative energy but maybe none as interesting as the Cool Earth Solar “Balloon.” The concept behind this design is that they create an “inflatable plastic thin-film balloon (solar concentrator) that, upon inflation, focuses sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell held at its focal point.

The design produces 400 times the electricity that a solar cell would create without the company’s concentrator.” Cool Earth has already began construction on a power plant in Livermore, CA that will utilize this new technology. The plant is modest in size, creating only 1.4 Megawatts but if this plant works as well as they expect it to, they plan on launching a full sized plant next summer. One great thing about this device is that it’s made up of a very common and cheap material. “Plastic thin film is abundant and cheap,” said Cool Earth Solar CEO Rob Lamkin. “It only costs two dollars for the plastic material necessary for our solar concentrator.”

It’s ideas like this that I think will stick. It’s cost efficient. It’s made of an easy to find material and it’s an environmentally sound concept.

Do you think this sounds like a good way to harness solar energy?

http://www.causecast.org/news_items/730 ... solar-cell

[nathan28]

oh, I thought this was an "over-unity motor" thread.

Cryptogon's archive has a lot about cheap power, and Kevin there did suggest that the Steorn debacle was a psy-op to associate any possibility of cheap energy with the over-unity "whut entrupy?" charlatans, since he noticed that nearly any thread about cheap energy schemes--like that floating solar balloon--seems to contain commenters who think it's another Steorn-like scenario. Myself, I think Steorn was just a last-ditch effort by a failing, in-the-red company (in, of all things, financial services IIRC) to get in the black, but I can see his point.

[slimmouse]

Ocean currents can power the world, say scientists
A revolutionary device that can harness energy from slow-moving rivers and ocean currents could provide enough power for the entire world, scientists claim.

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot - about one mile an hour - meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.

Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth's currents are slower than three knots.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.

Cylinders arranged over a cubic metre of the sea or river bed in a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts. This is more efficient than similar-sized turbines or wave generators, and the amount of power produced can increase sharply if the flow is faster or if more cylinders are added.

A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Systems could be sited on river beds or suspended in the ocean. The scientists behind the technology, which has been developed in research funded by the US government, say that generating power in this way would potentially cost only around 3.5p per kilowatt hour, compared to about 4.5p for wind energy and between 10p and 31p for solar power. They say the technology would require up to 50 times less ocean acreage than wave power generation.

The system, conceived by scientists at the University of Michigan, is called Vivace, or "vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy".

Michael Bernitsas, a professor of naval architecture at the university, said it was based on the changes in water speed that are caused when a current flows past an obstruction. Eddies or vortices, formed in the water flow, can move objects up and down or left and right.

"This is a totally new method of extracting energy from water flow," said Mr Bernitsas. "Fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices shed by the bodies of the fish in front of them. Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other's wake."

Such vibrations, which were first observed 500 years ago by Leonardo DaVinci in the form of "Aeolian Tones", can cause damage to structures built in water, like docks and oil rigs. But Mr Bernitsas added: "We enhance the vibrations and harness this powerful and destructive force in nature.

"If we could harness 0.1 per cent of the energy in the ocean, we could support the energy needs of 15 billion people. In the English Channel, for example, there is a very strong current, so you produce a lot of power."

Because the parts only oscillate slowly, the technology is likely to be less harmful to aquatic wildlife than dams or water turbines. And as the installations can be positioned far below the surface of the sea, there would be less interference with shipping, recreational boat users, fishing and tourism.

The engineers are now deploying a prototype device in the Detroit River, which has a flow of less than two knots. Their work, funded by the US Department of Energy and the US Office of Naval Research, is published in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.

Link;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy ... tists.html

[Perelandra]

I think this is really interesting stuff, thanks. Here's a tangential article I ran across some time ago, maybe it was here? Anyway, thought it may be of interest to some.

I recognized 1973 as the year my uncle, a former state senator, from Washington County, began a two-year effort to push through an approval to build an oil refinery in Eastport, Maine. The northern reaches of Maine are the only place in the eastern United States capable of accepting oil super tankers in their harbors. I had intimate details of my uncle’s effort because he talked a blue streak about it, especially when he won approval from the Maine legislators, only to have his initiative quashed by the Canadian government, whose leaders denied passage for the tankers through their Head Harbor Passage.

Were the Canadian government taking of Marvel Island and the oil port efforts related? I began research on the oil industry in Maine. In an old book on Maine history, called simply Maine, which included the story of my uncle’s efforts, I found a two-sentence reference to the fact that President John Kennedy had tried to build a tidal dam between Passamaquoddy and Cobscook Bay. The book said the dam was very controversial, had many enemies, was communistic, and did not proceed after his death. I was aghast. The dam was not only to be built in the county my uncle represented; it was to be built in his hometown −at his front doorstep.

We were a close extended family. My uncle had been in Miami during the Kennedy years, attending a Shriners' convention. He visited with my family, and he never mentioned the dam. Growing up, spending summers in Eastport, both my uncle and grandfather had regaled us with stories of President Roosevelt’s short-lived efforts to build the dam. Why did I not know that the one of the most written-about presidents in our history planned to build the Quoddy Dam? I asked my mother and my Aunt if they knew about Kennedy’s efforts. I asked my uncle’s daughter, then living in Seattle. No one had heard about John Kennedy’s Quoddy Dam. Showing my mother the book was required to make her believe it was true. My uncle’s daughter was incredulous; her father had never mentioned it. Surely, her father would have spoken of it to her, at least briefly, in his visits, letters and phone calls, if it were true, she told me. Eastport is a very small town and it would have been a big story there. The dam was always hoped for to save Eastport from economic decline. A model and exhibition of the Roosevelt Dam is a tourist attraction in the town; no mention of the Kennedy effort is in the exhibit.

“Now here is a possible motive for his murder I’ve never heard of, a domestic not a foreign issue,” I mused. The musings went no further. I dismissed the premise from my mind. Where was an average American to take information like this?

http://www.dreamofpassamaquoddy.com/thestory.htm