PhotonicInduction's Free Energy Device

[EEVblog]

From his deleted video, from 12:37

Andy claims to be able to make a 40TW free energy device using the earth rotating magnetic field and would be self-exciting and uses a gyroscope. He has the plans and it requires 4sqkm of land area, but he's giving the plans to China and Russia apparently.
Free energy is the reason he set up his channel to start with.

https://youtu.be/b8EwYOwplyw?t=690

I can't help but imagine

[Deodand2014]

I don't think that's going to work, you need a moving magnetic field to generate electricity.

[EEVblog]

I don't think that's going to work, you need a moving magnetic field to generate electricity.

He mentioned the earth is moving at 1000 miles an hour, so that would be in reference to spin from the center. I presume that somehow spins up the gyroscope thingo?
How it's gyroscope based and needs 4sq km is beyond me. Do you have a farm of 10,000 of them or something?
If that's the case then just make one first and prove it works...

[MrMobodies]

I would like to see it put to practice and see what happens.

If it did spin there is the question of what heavy winds and earth earthquakes will do to it whether it generates power or not.

[Nominal Animal]

He mentioned the earth is moving at 1000 miles an hour, so that would be in reference to spin from the center.

But the magnetic field is basically stationary with respect to Earths surface!

I don't get it.  If you have a rotating magnet, and you put your coils around it, rotating at the exact same angular velocity, no current is induced in the coil, because the magnetic field is constant with respect to the coil.

[Cyberdragon]

Even if you were to make giant coil that orbits the earth, the earth is spinning because of inertia. If you try to extract energy from the moving force you would act apon it and remove the inertia. AKA the world would stop turning.

[Mr. Scram]

He mentioned the earth is moving at 1000 miles an hour, so that would be in reference to spin from the center. I presume that somehow spins up the gyroscope thingo?
How it's gyroscope based and needs 4sq km is beyond me. Do you have a farm of 10,000 of them or something?
If that's the case then just make one first and prove it works...

A 1000 miles an hour relative to what? You need relative motion.

[T3sl4co1l]

This may be relevant:
https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/faraday.htm

Many an inventor has tripped over this riddle in some form or another; it's easy to get confused, but the answer is straightforward and consistent, from a number of perspectives.  One needs to understand these, and apply them carefully.

My guess is along these lines, that he made a prediction that failed to account for this sort of thing properly.  Or similarly, making what is effectively a dimensional error -- for example, constructing a conducting loop in a magnetic field naturally encloses flux in that loop, which generates energy, right?  Ah, but it generates energy once, not continuous power!  This is akin to the energy -- not power -- stored in a permanent magnet, which so many perpetual motion enthusiasts are confused by.

Tim

[EEVblog]

He mentioned the earth is moving at 1000 miles an hour, so that would be in reference to spin from the center. I presume that somehow spins up the gyroscope thingo?
How it's gyroscope based and needs 4sq km is beyond me. Do you have a farm of 10,000 of them or something?
If that's the case then just make one first and prove it works...

A 1000 miles an hour relative to what? You need relative motion.

Yep, I don't get it either

[Johnny10]

But the numbers are big so it must work!

[EEVblog]

But the numbers are belief is big so it must work!

Fixed it for you 

[Johnny10]

Why is it always the big numbers that fascinate us?
Why does everything have to be bigger?

Why not get my toy size gyroscope to generate enough free energy to charge my phone? And power my laptop and monitor.

[cdev]

The magnetic field is quite huge but as everybody has said it's usually not moving much relative to the earth however it does move /change through the day (Thats how it rotates with the Earth) and with the seasons (as shown by the shifting MUF) but very slowly, the only time it moves faster is during Carrington class CMEs. Then its strong, unbalances transformers and has the potential to cause / or possibly god forbid causes grid collapse.

I don't think that's going to work, you need a moving magnetic field to generate electricity.

He mentioned the earth is moving at 1000 miles an hour, so that would be in reference to spin from the center. I presume that somehow spins up the gyroscope thingo?
How it's gyroscope based and needs 4sq km is beyond me. Do you have a farm of 10,000 of them or something?
If that's the case then just make one first and prove it works...

Maybe he wants to have a thin room temperature superconductor (made out of 'unobtanium'? (notice the spelling change) (the stuff that was mined on the mythical Pandora). I would put this in the category of highly speculative ideas unlikely to be possible in the near term.

Fun to discuss however.. Certainly the total amount of land required would be small however very long and thin. And would it work? We don't know but it might, say if it was around the equator, it would likely do something. because if you spin a magnet (spin isnt the right word, because its not the spin of the earth so much as the slight push caused by the sun...photonic induction sounds about right, though) inside a circular conductor any deviation from straight up and down is going to cause electricity to be generated. And indeed the earth is not spinning on the same axis it rotates the sun in, its offset considerably, or we wouldn't have seasons.

NTRS is where I would look for more info on predictable wobbles in the magnetosphere.

[mc172]

The guy is quite funny to watch and I miss his regular uploads. Him chucking a big brick/section of a paving slab into a washing machine is absolutely hilarious. However, I remember watching this video when it was uploaded and I didn't know what to think, but it definitely changed my opinion of him. I now view his videos thinking that he doesn't really know what he's talking about.
What I have come to realise is that, him not knowing what he was talking about didn't really matter to me before, but since I've seen that, it has. Strange, eh.

[IanB]

I watched one or two videos, thought "this guy is an idiot", and never watched again. I don't understand why he generates so much publicity? Why isn't he ignored?

[IanB]

The guy is quite funny to watch...

When I was growing up as a little kid I saw clowns once or twice, at the circus for example. I found that clowns were boring and made my head hurt. I have found no entertainment in watching clowns ever since. PhotonicInduction is a clown.

[mc172]

I agree, but have you ever truly appreciated what 10 kA looks like?

[IanB]

I agree, but have you ever truly appreciated what 10 kA looks like?

When I was in my early teens I used to do all the usual experiments with chemistry and electricity. I may not have reached 10 kA, but I have lost count of the number of things I have melted (set on fire, blown up) by passing high currents through them. The fun is in the doing, not the watching.

Sadly, the things that were fun when I was 15 have lost their entertainment value at 50+. Memo to all children: have fun while you are young, because it won't be fun any more when you grow up.

[cdev]

What could be done if we discovered a way to make superconductors that were stable at Earth's ambient temperatures?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room-temperature_superconductor

This is a serious question.

[IanB]

What could be done if we discovered a way to make superconductors that were stable at Earth's ambient temperatures?

Not very much. We could reduce energy electrical losses from ~10% to zero. That would be interesting, but not game changing.

[amyk]

He might be thinking of something along the same principles as this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homopolar_generator

[EEVblog]

What could be done if we discovered a way to make superconductors that were stable at Earth's ambient temperatures?

Not very much. We could reduce energy electrical losses from ~10% to zero.

Depends how much it weighs too. There are practical weight considerations in transmission lines which is why they use aluminimum.
But couldn't such a superconductor be almost infinitely small diameter for any given current?
Could you really have say a single 40AWG wire carry all the power for a country for example?
I imagine you'd hit limits at connection points that might still be limited by connections issues like oxidisation layers + magnetic field current density etc.

[Mr. Scram]

Not very much. We could reduce energy electrical losses from ~10% to zero. That would be interesting, but not game changing.

It would make shipping large amounts of energy over long distances viable, making things like solar farms in sunny places more realistic than they are now.

[T3sl4co1l]

The size limit of a superconductor is given by its critical field strength, which varies with temperature.

For a given current, the magnetic field at the surface of a wire, is inversely proportional to its diameter.

This is partly why high temperature superconductors aren't actually all that useful (the current capacity at LN2 temperatures stinks), and why LHe is usually used with most superconducting magnets.

Superconducting cable is made with a great many strands: it's made like Litz, carrying the magnetic field evenly through the bulk of the cable, rather than only over the surface.  Superconductors force current flow to the surface, in the boundary layer (about a Debye length I think?), so a cable needs to be all surface to be most useful.

Actual cable is a fraction of the size of conventional cables, but certainly not zero, of course.  1kA might require an, um... *cough ahem* sized solid copper conductor, while the superconductor might be pencil sized.

The field intensity that superconductors can handle, makes mechanical support a priority.  The cables need to be embedded in a rigid support structure so they don't tear themselves apart!

Finally, obviously for current tech, a cryogenic Dewar is required.  The cooling cost is pretty substantial, so it doesn't make sense for long distance transmission, even in congested areas.  Research is ongoing, though: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-superconductor-technology-transmission-grid.html

Tim

[Nominal Animal]

What could be done if we discovered a way to make superconductors that were stable at Earth's ambient temperatures?

Not very much. We could reduce energy electrical losses from ~10% to zero. That would be interesting, but not game changing.

No, you're thinking of perfect conductors.  The magnetic side of superconductivity, the expulsion of magnetic flux within the conductor, is what makes superconductors so darned useful.

Real high temperature superconductors, at temperatures where most metals start to melt, would open up some *real* interesting stuff.  Backpack-sized fusion reactors, for example.  (The tighter and stronger the magnetic bottle, the denser and energetic you can make the plasma, without subjecting the containment vessel material to so many high-energy particles it turns steel to tissue paper.)

[Nominal Animal]

This is partly why high temperature superconductors aren't actually all that useful (the current capacity at LN2 temperatures stinks), and why LHe is usually used with most superconducting magnets.

And also why for lossless transmission, perfect conductors would be much better than superconductors.

[BrianHG]

Apparently the space shuttle Electrodynamic tether experiment did create power from earth's magnetic field, but during the test deployment, it created too much power and the conductor burned out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether
But, as you guessed, the the rocket has injected all that insane momentum into the mass of the orbiting tether, where drawing current over time will eventually drag down the orbiting device...

[T3sl4co1l]

This is partly why high temperature superconductors aren't actually all that useful (the current capacity at LN2 temperatures stinks), and why LHe is usually used with most superconducting magnets.

And also why for lossless transmission, perfect conductors would be much better than superconductors.

Incidentally, for AC transmission in particular, superconductors are... weird.

For one, cable is usually superconductor embedded in copper -- it's stronger, it's resistive at higher temperatures, and it provides some bulk dissipation capacity in the event of a quench.

Copper becomes an ever-better conductor at low temperatures, but never a superconductor: it has residual resistance.  This means all the usual AC loss effects are still in play, even if the cable is mostly superconducting.  The copper has some skin effect (which, at low temperatures, is fairly shallow, even at mains frequency, due to its improved conductivity), so the superconducting strands need to be placed towards the surface (which explains the cross-sections shown in typical drawings of this stuff).

You can also make cables out of the superconductor alone, to varying degrees of "can"; most of these materials are very brittle, so it can be difficult to manufacture and handle.  If executed correctly, you get a high Q factor, for basically all frequencies from DC to "light".

Type 1 superconductors are great at this; niobium resonators are used in LINACs at ~1000MHz, with Q factor in the 10^7 range.  The Q is decidedly finite, though, and the loss mechanisms are not understood.  It depends greatly on surface finish.

Type 2 superconductors are noticeably bad.  In fact this can be felt: a magnet can be pushed into such a superconductor, where it will stick in place (flux pinning).  A force was applied, over some distance: work!  It's lossy!  In fact, it exhibits hysteresis loss.  We should expect (I haven't seen any numbers on this unfortunately -- but it should be the case) that this gives a much lower Q for AC currents.

There are different forms of conductor as well.  Thin films can be made in very good quality.  AFAIK, this is what's being used for quantum computing devices.  AFAIK, the crummy ones are polycrystalline, so flux pinning probably has something to do with grain boundaries.  Maybe thin films can be deposited on carrier wires, and those embedded in cable for power?  Dunno.

Tim

[G7PSK]

It is very simple really. You wrap a bloody great coil around the earth such that the earth spins within it, voila you have a generator, not sure how long the earth would continue spinning afterwards and never mind the cost of the wire.

[ModemHead]

It is very simple really. You wrap a bloody great coil around the earth such that the earth spins within it, voila you have a generator, not sure how long the earth would continue spinning afterwards and never mind the cost of the wire.

I sure wouldn't want to live anywhere near the slip rings for that one.   

[Domagoj T]

Why would the Earth spin within it? Unless you actively push the other way, the coil would start spinning as well, but at that point you already have an energy source.