OPNIONS WANTED sounds too good to be true

[josmith]

I guess it’s good to have something to believe in. It seems that the majority believes that there will be some kind of energy breakthrough to save the world from the inevitable exhaustion of readily available fossil fuel.
I believe in the above mentioned “old rule”which dictates that there will be no breakthrough. When the oil begins to get scarce there will be a period of ugliness, which will include distroying, the environment with strip mining and oil exploration in areas they are now protected. The damage that will be done is sickening to think of. And of course, the last drop of oil will be expended in a war over the last drop of oil.
When the smoke clears the survivors will have to find a way to survive on the energy from the sun since that is the only real source of energy on this planet.
It would wiser to start conserving the energy resources we have and planning for their inevitable end by building a self sustaining infrastructure. The chances of that happening are about as likely as the chances of one of these hokey perpetual generators working.
This isn’t pessimism it’s realism.
Silverado!

[haklesup]

Lets not let the clouds of global warming rain on the parade.<p>There already is much momentum and desire to develop alternative energy sources. Both Economic and ecologic forces are in line on that issue, even the Oil mongers wouldn't mind a little relief from other generation sources.<p>Although I agree there will not be a sudden revolution, there will be a continuous evolution in where our power comes from. We will still get the bulk of our power from central generation plants for some time but there is a growing grid of alternative sources. Wind power is at the lead right now (for payback). Eventually there will be an "internet" of sorts consisting of many inputs distributed in many places. Maybe not our homes but from farms, local co-ops, coastal wave generators, regional solar farms, and other yet to emerge technologies (fuel cells not forgotten).<p>That Kansas senator was not champoining the hummingbird generator but working to get more distribution lines into Kansas so the farmers can get the electricity out. IEEE Spectrum did a piece on the whole subject a few months back,<p>[ June 08, 2004: Message edited by: haklesup ]</p>

[dacflyer]

wow i have a new all time record...3 pages
how far will it go... might be in the next N&V
magazine perhaps? i really stirred up the hornets nest this time...heehee
anyone interested in a gas powered tv? :p
thats another story to tell later on....

[perfectbite]

Oh ye of little faith.......<p>I have to give you both your due, you're not cynical but you are hardly guarded optimists either.<p>So what if some huckster sells 1.6 M $20 videos and a dubious promise. If it really worked every house on the planet would have one by now.<p>But, don't forget that overshot water wheels ushered in the dawn of the industrial age and that their power source was environmentally friendly, constant AND free. That power was derived from kinetic energy, the lifting and carrying done by the weather. In the same way, the super magnets available now could be considered constant sources of already lifted potential kinetic energy. <p>A really strong magnetic field produced without using external power. What will they think of next?

[rshayes]

Overshot water wheel use the potential energy of the water source, undershot wheels and turbines use the kinetic energy, and breast wheels use some of both. Which one works best depends on the characteristics of the water source.<p>An overshot wheel the height of Boulder Dam would be an impressive sight. You could pick up a little extra output by selling tickets to tourists for a ride down. The climb back up would be good exercise. Every litle bit helps.<p>I have seen some claims that the Romans used mills driven by undershot wheels on the Tiber River. This certainly predates the Industrial Revolution.<p>Permanent magnets are not really an energy source. There is some energy stored in the magnetic field, but extracting it would demagnetize the magnet. I doubt if the stored energy is very high, since they can be magnetized by discharging a capacitor bank through suitable coils, and I suspect that this is not a very efficient process.

[perfectbite]

Stephen, Remember when a wire was 'dropped' out of the space shuttle and the idea was to drag the wire in the earth's magnetic field to generate current but the wire broke? I think that is the closest we'll ever get to significant, free (but very expensive) energy. That experiment was never repeated so it may have been a bust too and now there's talk of extracting the energy from billionths of a cubic centimeter of vacuum space. <p>"......Enough energy to power the world's needs for a century or so....." <p>Somehow I don't think I'll be living long enough to see that, I've heard of the promise of Fusion power all of my adult life and I don't think I'll be seeing that either, so forget expensive 'free' energy systems.<p>A simple, bona fide, unity device (even one lined up with the planet's spin) with no other function than to power its own motion, running in a glass vaccum chamber would be a sight to see. (If it could overcome air resistance it would be an over unity machine, accelerating in a vacuum). It would be the marvel of the age as it were. Are we anywhere near that point in our technology, could magnetic 'influence' overcome minimal friction?

[josmith]

I remember the wire generator in outer space. I couldn't believe that it got that far. It should have been apparent that the only available source of energy was the kenetic energy of the shuttle in motion. If the wire didn't break they would have been forced to cut it loose before it decayed the orbit and crashed the shuttle.

[jollyrgr]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by stephen:

Permanent magnets are not really an energy source. There is some energy stored in the magnetic field, but extracting it would demagnetize the magnet. I doubt if the stored energy is very high, since they can be magnetized by discharging a capacitor bank through suitable coils, and I suspect that this is not a very efficient process.<hr></blockquote><p>Permanent magnet generators are available and are used in applications such as windmills. Here is an example of such generators:<p>http://www.windstreampower.com/generators/443541.html<p>
Still you need to use wind, steam, or SOME sort of force to gain electric power from the generator. A stationary magnet will not produce any power. And using a permanent magnet does not demagnetize the magnet to extract the energy. Instead a moving (usually rotating) magnetic field induces a current into a coil. The current then produces a magnetic field that opposes the rotating magnet. The higher the current the higher the opposing magnet the more difficult (thus more work) is needed to rotate the magnet. The current induced is then directed through a load (lights, heating coil, motor, or whatever) to do work for us. It all goes back to energy being converted from one form to another.<p>As far as running out of oil....
I do not believe that this will ever be a factor. Should underground oil come close to running out, the "gasoline" and "diesel" fuels can easily come from biomass waste. The corn husks, hemp, wheat stocks, etc. can all be turned into ethanol. Basically waste products from food production could fuel cars right now. With minimal changes to the fuel system (mostly rubber gaskets and fuel injectors) you could burn ethanol in existing cars.<p>The same holds true for diesel engines. So called "bio diesel" systems are on the road right now (at least in the midwest and Hawaii). And the burning of bio diesel smells like french fries rather than like nasty diesel fuel.<p>Back in the so called energy crisis of the 1970's I was in grade school. Teachers then said that if something wasn't done we (the grade schoolers in the class) would never be able to drive a car. All lies to raise the price of oil. The price went up and gas became plentiful again. Right now wars are being blamed for the increase in gas prices. It would seem strange that a war in a country that was producing very little oil for the open market would cause a huge increase in prices if it were not "opportunistic" price fixing.

[rshayes]

Permanent magnet generators have been around a lot longer than that. The classic demonstration of electric generation by a magnetic field is simply moving a permanent magnet past a fixed wire connected to a galvanometer. This was demonstrated by Faraday, probably in the mid 1800's. The hand crank telephones of the early 1900's also used a permanent magnet generator for signalling the operator. These generators do not extract energy from the magnet itself. The energy comes from whatever is supplying the force to move the maget or wire.<p>There is energy stored in the magnetic field of a magnet. In the case of a superconducting magnet, this energy is released if the magnet is allowed to become non-superconducting. Probably half goes into heating the magnet coil and the other half goes into surrounding conductive objects, either heating them or mechanically moving them. In a large magnet this can be quite destructive. This is with fields of 100,000 gauss or so filling volumes of fractions of cubic feet.<p>A normal permanent magnet is dealing with fields of a few thousand gauss and volumes of a few cubic centimeters. The energy would be much less (probably a fraction of a joule), and since the magnet is permanent, would not normally be extracted. <p>A previous post on this bulletin board (several months ago) referred to a patent for a power generation system. The patent was careful to claim that it was not for a perpetual motion machine, since the energy came from the slow demagnetization of a permanent magnet associated with the machine. This patent claimed that since the output power exceeded the input power, it was obviously possible to use part of the output power to drive the machine, and that the rest of the power was "free" energy. This is obvious and should be trivial, but somehow it hasn't been done yet even though several years have passed.<p>By itself, a permanent magnet stores some energy, but is not an energy source. It can be used to create a fixed magnetic field that can be used in a generator driven by a mechanical energy source.

[dacflyer]

another point .......here in my town of
Hope Mills NC they are getting ready to replace the dam that broke over a year ago due to heavy rain a year ago.....anyway,,many moons ago they had a small spillway on the side of the dam that turned a generator to power the mill...well it was abandoned many years ago since commercial power came into play..and with this new dam they are building...which is way way over kill..it takes in almost 1/2 the lake...i do not understand why they do not put in another turbine or 2 to make / sell power back to the power company...the dam will spill great ammounts of water to turn the generators with no problem,,,i do not get it....theres many streams / rivers that could utilize rivers for power...Hmmm
hell europe is one of the biggest users of green power....everywhere there people use solar of some sort or another,,,solar water / power...wind turbines . and water powered generators..its unreal that here no one uses it much in the usa,,,
ok, enough for now,,,,ttyal...

[Bernius1]

Dark energy is ground plane. You still need the pos. or neg. energy. Another source of natural energy in trace amounts is background noise.
When you flush the toilet , it turns counter-clockwise. Adding a stream of liquid to start a clockwise current only lasts until the lever is flipped. The REAL question is : IF there is an external 'free' energy source out there, CAN we harness/convert it using LESS than 100% of that energy in the process ??? Two theremins through reverse-turned inductors to revers phase, to harness background noise ??????
Hydrocodone takkeing ee.ff.e..c...t.....

[perfectbite]

Dacflyer. Apparently, if the reservoir's flow is useful enough to provide enough water power to power generators, that flow will cause the dam to silt up and it then takes a dredge to keep a channel clear to the turbine's intakes, making power generation high maintenance and the lake not even a decent reservoir. For Rocky Mountain dams, where the reservoir's feed water is coming from rock canyons, silting isn't too much of a problem and they have at it.<p>I can remember when it was advertised that nuclear fission generated electric power would be so cheap to produce and plentiful that they wouldn't even bother metering it! (What's a nuclear reactor Dad? Can we have one? What's a meter? Isn't it free already?) <p>We are heat and energy hogs. Apart from the actual physical energy required, imagine the kind of heat energy it takes to get glazed toilet bowls or shower stall tiles. (A very high standard of living would not be possible without an equally high standard of sanitation.) <p>Wind power is decimating wild bird populations. (It is a quality of life issue on both sides, Grandma Millie's A/C unit versus a child's heritage to know more than just Crows and Seagulls).<p>Biomass has it limits too. The American Indians were appalled to see their forests being cut down and the wood being shipped back to England because the fuel was needed. The UK's forests were used up. At one time the American forests were so extensive that a squirrel could go from New Jersey to about Illinois and would never have had to touch the ground along the way! <p>It is more than sad. It is worrisome.<p>[ June 10, 2004: Message edited by: perfectbite ]</p>

[Will]

When the oil flow stops - which it inevitably will - thren we'll just go to nuclear power - somewhat too high in capital costs for the moment but that will change. No one seems to take account of the fact that we can not, at present, take advantage of available hydro-power because the green nuts/sierra club etc are not only preventing us from building new dams - they are actively and successfully engaged in having existing dams demolished so that makes it more difficult for us - but benefits the fish. Except in places like China of course, they are busy running several millions of people out of their homes to make way for the lakes of the Three Gorges dams

[perfectbite]

The byproduct of nuclear power is nuclear waste. coming up with a way to satisfactorily handle that, even to the non greenies amongst us, will be a chore.<p>I once worked for a welding research project manager in Chicago. He had looked into being the welding quality engineer at an under construction nuclear plant just North of Chicago. He was interested in the position until he went to see the site and found that the welders were welding the 24" schedule 300 (?) (about a 2 1/2" wall) Stainless Steel pipes and flanges with regular old mild steel 7018 low hydrogen rod. He took one look and left. Even building the damn things requires constant expert supervision. That plant never started up. Whew!

[dacflyer]

perfectbite >> on the dam,,,makes sence to me now..thanks..