"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
My Response to Simon's Challenge
Simon Brookes sent a call out for a team to discuss wireless energy solutions in Africa:
"You mentioned Witricity above. Maybe you can form a team focussing efforts on this type of innovation for African nations. What are the problems? How might you implement a sustainable solution in these poor
communities? I can't wait to see what happens. Let me know if you manage to get something going and I'll be handing out extra Power Points".
Two agents have taken the challenge: David Perner, Mark Skaf
As someone who has conducted hundreds of thousands of volts through his body (don't ask), I've been doing alot of "hands on" research in the matter. I've also spoken with dozens of electrical engineers about wireless energy transmission, as well as sustainable applications for it.
For starters, air makes a lousy medium for transmitting energy. Certain frequencies are superior at traveling through it than others. The method for transmitting that energy is important as well. Light, as a laser, tends to diffuse rapidly is considered inefficient as a means of transmitting energy. High power lasers are also very expensive to build.
The technology discussed in Witricity maxes out at "several meters" per their website, which doesn't make it a good candidate for far field wireless energy transmission. Its great for a desk, or at best, an apartment, but I don't see it functioning in a rural setting.
High voltage transmission like the above video of me are also very inefficient and diffuse rapidly. Tesla coils' namesake, Nikolai Tesla, had a brilliant idea for transmitting energy using the earth as a conductor, but it was burnt down by the government and almost all of his notes were lost. On a large scale like he intended Wardenclyffe to be, its possible, but is there anyone out there up to the challenge?
Radio waves aren't particularly good for transmitting energy, but their cousin microwaves show some promise. At certain frequencies, they suffer very much from environmental factors such as rain, high pollen and particulate counts, etc.
The most recent study I could find was performed by the French on the Island of Reunion. Its surprisingly difficult to find a good write-up of it, here's the best I could do. Maybe we should get the librarians on it...
None of these technologies seem particularly promising for distributed wireless energy transmission, except the last one. More research needs to be done on RF rectennas, the type they used on Reunion.
But I keep getting back to the question, why do they need the electricity in the first place? Ideally, locally produced, repurposed bicycle parts and mechanical solutions could handle locomotion and appliances. These solutions work well because they rely on the ingenuity of the Africans themselves, and not Westerners imposing their ideas of what they should have.
The best wireless technologies we haven't discussed are currently the most available. Solar cells are for all intents and purposes wireless, though you have to connect them to batteries or electronics at some point. They're approaching 20% efficiency and are currently more affordable than at any point in their history, due to a glut on the international market caused by high investment in manufacturing several years ago when energy prices were higher and the corresponding decline in demand when oil and gas dropped in the economic recession.
However, solar cells are still a first world item, rarely produced in the third world to the quality standards that allow for efficient cell output, and requiring significant energy invested for energy output (EROEI).
The best wireless technology? Why, wind. It comes with no strings attached, can be made locally from recycled parts, and once again relies on the ingenuity of the locals. Energy storage becomes the main issue, as the wind doesn't always blow when its needed, but fortunately advancements in Lithium Ion technology and the old standby (and surprisingly recyclable) lead acid batteries are making them increasingly affordable.
So unless we can get a partnershipw ith an RF rectenna manufacturer, or the French Scientists that orchestrated the Reunion project, the best course of action would seem to be to encourage more William Kamkwambas and Maya Pedals with possibly a Lebone type battery technology for good measure.
I'd like to team up with the librarians to do more research on rf rectennas to see if microwave energy transmission could become cost competitive with copper or aluminum wires. However, even if wireless energy transmission becomes feasible, it still needs an energy source, and right now the most sustainable forms of that are wind and solar, with potential for well filtered biogas or gasifier generators eventually supplementing that.
"You mentioned Witricity above. Maybe you can form a team focussing efforts on this type of innovation for African nations. What are the problems? How might you implement a sustainable solution in these poor
communities? I can't wait to see what happens. Let me know if you manage to get something going and I'll be handing out extra Power Points".
Two agents have taken the challenge: David Perner, Mark Skaf
As someone who has conducted hundreds of thousands of volts through his body (don't ask), I've been doing alot of "hands on" research in the matter. I've also spoken with dozens of electrical engineers about wireless energy transmission, as well as sustainable applications for it.
For starters, air makes a lousy medium for transmitting energy. Certain frequencies are superior at traveling through it than others. The method for transmitting that energy is important as well. Light, as a laser, tends to diffuse rapidly is considered inefficient as a means of transmitting energy. High power lasers are also very expensive to build.
The technology discussed in Witricity maxes out at "several meters" per their website, which doesn't make it a good candidate for far field wireless energy transmission. Its great for a desk, or at best, an apartment, but I don't see it functioning in a rural setting.
High voltage transmission like the above video of me are also very inefficient and diffuse rapidly. Tesla coils' namesake, Nikolai Tesla, had a brilliant idea for transmitting energy using the earth as a conductor, but it was burnt down by the government and almost all of his notes were lost. On a large scale like he intended Wardenclyffe to be, its possible, but is there anyone out there up to the challenge?
Radio waves aren't particularly good for transmitting energy, but their cousin microwaves show some promise. At certain frequencies, they suffer very much from environmental factors such as rain, high pollen and particulate counts, etc.
The most recent study I could find was performed by the French on the Island of Reunion. Its surprisingly difficult to find a good write-up of it, here's the best I could do. Maybe we should get the librarians on it...
None of these technologies seem particularly promising for distributed wireless energy transmission, except the last one. More research needs to be done on RF rectennas, the type they used on Reunion.
But I keep getting back to the question, why do they need the electricity in the first place? Ideally, locally produced, repurposed bicycle parts and mechanical solutions could handle locomotion and appliances. These solutions work well because they rely on the ingenuity of the Africans themselves, and not Westerners imposing their ideas of what they should have.
The best wireless technologies we haven't discussed are currently the most available. Solar cells are for all intents and purposes wireless, though you have to connect them to batteries or electronics at some point. They're approaching 20% efficiency and are currently more affordable than at any point in their history, due to a glut on the international market caused by high investment in manufacturing several years ago when energy prices were higher and the corresponding decline in demand when oil and gas dropped in the economic recession.
However, solar cells are still a first world item, rarely produced in the third world to the quality standards that allow for efficient cell output, and requiring significant energy invested for energy output (EROEI).
The best wireless technology? Why, wind. It comes with no strings attached, can be made locally from recycled parts, and once again relies on the ingenuity of the locals. Energy storage becomes the main issue, as the wind doesn't always blow when its needed, but fortunately advancements in Lithium Ion technology and the old standby (and surprisingly recyclable) lead acid batteries are making them increasingly affordable.
So unless we can get a partnershipw ith an RF rectenna manufacturer, or the French Scientists that orchestrated the Reunion project, the best course of action would seem to be to encourage more William Kamkwambas and Maya Pedals with possibly a Lebone type battery technology for good measure.
I'd like to team up with the librarians to do more research on rf rectennas to see if microwave energy transmission could become cost competitive with copper or aluminum wires. However, even if wireless energy transmission becomes feasible, it still needs an energy source, and right now the most sustainable forms of that are wind and solar, with potential for well filtered biogas or gasifier generators eventually supplementing that.
Views: 22
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Comment by cameron michael keys on March 9, 2010 at 4:07am
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I came across a plasma physicist at Cornell University's Math Department named James McCanney who claims to be able to reconstruct -- no joke -- the Tesla tower that uses earth as a conductor, as you mentioned in your blog. Professor McCanney has written several books dealing with the topic, including Principia Meteorologia: The Physics of Sun-Earth Weather. Tesla's tower uses a small amount of input energy to send a beam of electrons into the upper ionosphere, which induces a charge transfer that is literally a controlled beam of lightning. The amount of energy that returns through the Tesla tower is the same as the energy capacitance of a lightning bolt -- far exceeding the storage capacity of our best batteries. It's so powerful that it causes meltdowns of whatever electric grid is utilized for storage. If any of you know of a design set-up that could utilize the energy of a lightning bolt, Tesla towers are definitely available for construction, and they really work. Professor McCanney owned a satellite manufacture company in the 1980s and built plans for a nationwide distribution network of small household battery storage units, about the size of a hot water heater, that could absorb the power of the ionosphere reaction of the Tesla tower, but has yet to receive funding for an pilot study. Apparently Tesla and Edison were players in an energy battle around the turn of the 20th century when the electrical infrastructure of America was implemented, and Edison's version won out. Tesla's idea, according to Professor McCanney, was just what I've elaborated here: place energy storage units in every home, linked in a decentralized grid, with Tesla towers at a few strategic and secure locations. The energy from a single discharged beam from the ionosphere can power every home in America for a day, if I recall correctly. The problem, again -- aside from the geopolitics of energy consumption -- is the energy storage infrastructure.
Hope this helps. Peace // Cameron
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Comment by Nick Heyming on March 9, 2010 at 4:15am
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Thats funny, cuz the storage infrastructure is the same problem with wind and solar! Thanks for the link, I have a friend who is also doing some amazing work with Tesla's designs, but the ghost of Westinghouse and Edison still seems to haunt the grid they built....
What if the cars were the storage bank?
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Interesting idea. I googled the question "How much wattage in a bolt of lightning" and discovered the average lightning bolt only converts into 250 kilowatt-hours of usable energy. The average house uses 500-kilowatt-hours per month. So the Tesla tower would be like a power plant, continually or continuously filtering energy from the ionosphere (which gets its excess charge at least partly as a consequence of the solar wind). Another possibility is using the electric properties of large storm systems off the coast of Africa to dissipate the destructive power of hurricanes and tropical storms, diverting some of that energy to an electrical grid. Once again, Professor McCanney has developed schematics for this approach, involving a large network of electrically ionized buouys in the ocean that can induce lightning bolts, connected to transfer station on land that can send the energy to a storage infrastructure. African social innovators may be capable of convincing a very wealthy investment house to fund a study of the effects of this type of approach, as well. Storm systems have considerably more energy than isolated lightning bolts. Professor McCanney claims that satellites in low earth orbit with high-energy lasers could be utilized to prevent hurricanes from damaging coastal areas and island chains, in conjunction with the aforementioned buouy system. Now, I'll begin researching the problem of storage capacity in earnest. It's a fundamental issue, as you've pointed out, even with wind and solar power. If some breakthrough can be managed in the storage department, many new vistas for social innovation arise as truly feasible and auspicious contributions to the purpose of the Evoke mission -- alleviating global energy crises. Nice working with you; I'm very excited.
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Okay, I've got another angle on the capacitor-storage problem. The problem is stated succinctly by weatherimagery.com: "While capacitors today can store huge amounts of electricity, most aren’t charged in about 0.2 msec, the time it takes for a lightning bolt to discharge its 1,000,000 kilovolts of electricity. Conversely, these large capacitors are usually charged “slowly” and then quickly discharged in specialized applications (particle accelerators, lasers, rail guns, etc). If you only captured a portion of the electricity produced by a lightning bolt, then you would need more hits on a collection tower to make up the difference." This got me to thinking. I've long been interested in the Arcology theory of Italian architect Paolo Soleri, who is famous for his belief that mega-structures offer a solution to urban sprawl and energy crises. Soleri's latest exhibit in Beijing, China ended on February 28th, 2010. It was titled "3D City: Future China" to highlight its vertical dimensionality as a solution to the horizontal sprawl of suburban design. http://facesofdesign.com/event/beijing-center-arts-presents-3d-city...
Soleri's mega-structure would have at least 100,000 units, commercial, residential, manufacturing, et al. Each unit needs power, and each unit could have one of these hot water heater-sized storage units as discussed in previous posts. Soleri's complex could provide an ideal platform for the Tesla-inspired electrical grid we're considering. It's kind of bewildering to imagine what it would feel like to "live" in a situation like this, in a mega-city. But we're just looking for something that works to solve the problems of our moment. If it works, and if it's feasible, perhaps someone will consider trying it. The Chinese government has been meeting with Soleri for several years now in what could become a landmark event: the large-scale experimentation in the construction of what Soleri calls "an urban laboratory." Since the 60s Soleri has claimed that he could change the way the world looks at civil engineering if someone would just supply him with the equivalent of the cost of a single 747 jet.
It helps me to recall the overarching vision of Michio Kaku, founder of String-Field Theory, in moments like this. He claims that implementing a worldwide electrical grid and planetary internet system takes us from Phase zero to the beginning of Phase one in the Five-Phase Civilization Graph. Phase two is harnessing the energy of the sun directly and storing its energy at posts throughout the solar system (accompanied by an interplanetary internet). Phase three is galactic. Phase four is intergalactic. And Phase five is the creation of a baby universe by intelligent creators. http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/members/mkaku.htm
Interestingly, in Kaku's book Hyperspace he says that a trio of satellites will be launched in 2012 by an international space consortium and placed in basically an equilateral triangle around the sun for the purpose of sensing gravitational waves, it's called the LISA program (http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AdSpR..40...25B). This is the first attempt by humans to place a network of satellites around the sun designed to utilize the natural action of the sun for purposes of discovering the fundamental laws of nature. It's a preliminary step that could lead, if we make it to Phase 1 without annihilating ourselves or dropping the ball, to future endeavors to harness the sun's energy directly. Sorry if I'm bombarding you with too much information. When I get excited I have trouble turning off the spout.
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Comment by David Perner on March 9, 2010 at 5:11am
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I always feel like the contrarian in these discussions, but the idea of charging a layer of the atmosphere makes me a bit nervous, only because I don't know what the effects of doing so would be to the atmosphere itself and technology we may have that relies on the ionosphere to function, like communications equipment. I think you might run into problems with freeloaders too with such a system, as there'd be no control over who would be able to draw on this power that's pumped into the ionosphere, which may or may not be a problem depending on what the goal is.
As you say in the post, very specific wavelengths of microwaves are pretty good for transmitting power, although at the moment they're still experimental systems. It's essentially just a ramped up version of communications transmitters, but you'd have to ask if the lower cost and complexity of wires makes transmission not worth it.
You're right about solar panels having a long rate of energy investment return, but I've heard about a lot of solar installation in countries like Bangladesh, not by NGOs, but by rural Bangladeshis who pay to install them. Perhaps it would be worth investigating ways to manufacture the cells in countries like Bangladesh, or as you mention, manufacture them to higher quality to be worthwhile.
I think you're definitely on to something with windmills. As William Kamkwamba's story attests to, they can be built locally with local materials and labor, and produce enough power to light a house, which is a big deal if you want to work after dark, haha. And also, regarding storage, William used lead acid batteries to even out the power from the windmill, so that at least shouldn't be too much of a stretch. On top of that, hopefully in a couple years automotive Li-ion batteries should be coming onto the market after their use in cars. They'll still have 80% or so of their rated capacity, which is way more than enough for villages now in developing nations. We shall see though.
I think you also make a good point about what we think they need and what these communities know they need. I've heard of many projects that fail because the communities they were supposed to serve were never consulted or consulted properly. And just like a product in the developed world, if you don't know your market, it won't work.
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Comment by Bongumusa on March 9, 2010 at 8:53am
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I think you made a good straight forward points. It is clear and relevant. Can you be my mentor? I know that I can go a long way with you. You opens our minds and give thorough knowledge. Keep it up!
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I've been searching all over for a mid to long range application of the technology Witricity uses. Unfortunately, thats just not the way physics work. It still looks like it either has to be a huge planetary grid like Tesla intended (which could have quite a few unintended consequences), or a microwave transmission like the Reunion project.
The important question is "Where is the energy coming from?" In the Reunion project, it was most likely either nuclear energy (France has one of the world's largest nuclear programs) or localized fossil energy (more likely given that it was on an island). Those two types of technologies are the most prevalent now (overwhelmingly so in the case of coal and natural gas), but are unsustainable for a wide variety of reasons.
So if we're investing all this time and energy into creating energy solutions, why would we want to be broadcasting microwave radiation that is generated from dirty energy sources?
Well, you might say, why not use that technology for solar and wind energy?
If you had a huge solar plant, like the ones here in Kramer Junction, that would be potentially feasible. But why would you want to broadcast it wirelessly when you'd lose 80% of those hard-earned sun electrons? The optimum efficiency of the microwave transmission was listed around 20%, which is also around the optimum efficiency of solar generation. So that means you're losing 96% of your potential electricity if you were broadcasting photovoltaic energy through microwaves. Contrast that with the 90+% efficiency of a Lead Acid Battery (though according to this study it can drop to as low as 55% in bad weather when charged by PV), which just bumps you down to 82% loss.
Those numbers might be confusing though, because its almost impossible to capture ALL of the sunlight energy, so for the purpose of this, lets just say if you invest in a solar cell, if you use wires to transmit it you keep over 95% of the energy (though you have to use it right away!), if you use a battery you keep somewhere like 55 to 90% of the energy, and if you use a microwave or laser to transmit it somewhere you keep less than 20% of the energy.
So it certainly seems like the most practical distributed energy system is a combination of wind and solar attached to batteries, although we shouldn't count out geothermal or gasifier/biogas type technologies.
I really like Vertical Axis wind turbines. They can also be built out of practically anything, and aren't as dangerous for birds (a big concern in Africa, or anywhere large migrations occur), and have some other advantages over Horizontal turbines.
It would be awesome to partner with William Kamkwamba and maybe some African universities and trade schools to educate more Africans about small-scale wind manufacturing and solar and battery applications...
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Comment by Marc Skaf on March 9, 2010 at 5:58pm
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I'm no expert on the matter, just very interested in the topic. Can someone explain the wh*** "ionosphere" thing to me, I know Tesla was going to use it to create "free" energy.
Also, has anyone heard of Joseph Newman and if so, is there any reason why this hasn't been looked at any further, or was it a hoax?
Is it possible to create an electricity "multiplier", that is energy in is less than energy out? We have made many more energy efficient appliances, I would think that we are on the verge of getting more out of less energy.
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There are plenty of force multipliers for mechanical energy. Levers and pulleys and screws and wedges.
Just about every machine we know of is a combination of these simple machines. However, due to Newton's laws of thermodynamics, the force or work input is equal to the output.
The same applies to amplification of electrical energy. Its not a new concept.
As for free energy and zero point energy, MAN is it tempting and seems too good to be true. I want to believe... but the smartest electrical engineers I know haven't been able to make working prototypes, and not for lack of trying. I hope we can eventually recreate something like what Tesla envisioned, but for now we're stuck with the laws of thermodynamics...
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Maybe the laws have to be rewritten, lol. However, it's a shame that our relatively short life spans as humans restricts us to fully understand such huge topics. Conspiracy or not, it is a shame that Tesla was so close so many years ago.
I'd like to draw attention to Ian Tuck who is also very knowledgeable on the subject. Hopefully he can include some of his insights.
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