http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...-from-thin-air
Not sure it warrants an explanation why it's so, so wrong.
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http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/1...-from-thin-air
Not sure it warrants an explanation why it's so, so wrong.
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cptwhite_uk (14-02-2013)
As is usually the case, the comments make far more interesting/amusing reading!
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My broadband speed - 750 Meganibbles/minute
Energy doesn't leak as such. There are losses, which are resistive, and dielectric losses, but a magnetic field is not inherently a loss - unless it is made one half of a transformer and energy is drawn off, as the article is claiming, in which case it is theft, as much as bypassing a meter.
However I remain sceptical about the claim.
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I can send the Moose out under power lines to get more POWAR!!
@BobF64: There's very little than can be done, feasibly, to eliminate an electromagnetic field around power lines or transformers. As peterb says, you're essentially making the secondary winding of a transformer (think, electric toothbrush or Qi inductive charging mats), you don't get the energy for free; drawing power in this way loads the grid in the same way as anything else. This is no less stealing than trying to pull power from the cables directly with a cable, albeit many times less dangerous.
As for the scale of power you can gain by using stuff like wifi or mobile phone signals, as the article suggests, well whoever came up with the device either completely lacks understanding of how small the power levels they're dealing with are, or are completely aware and deliberately misleading others. For example, I'm currently sitting in the same room as my WiFi AP, and according to my phone, it's receiving a signal at around -60dBm, or 0.000000001 Watts, or one *billionth* of a Watt, just for an idea of scale. Cell signal is more like -90dBm, and GPS make both look huge, at something like -120dBm. Sure, you can in theory get more power with a higher gain antenna (within reason, and still not to anywhere near a useful level), but you see the kind of power levels were dealing with, and besides, the device isn't very big.
TL-DR: The self-discharge of the battery would be several orders of magnitude higher...
Or, why not save the several quid you'll be spending on this device as, even if it worked as well as claimed i.e. an AA battery every day or so, you're really not going to be setting yourself back much just plugging a charger in to the mains...
Edit: I think I remember reading about something like this a while back. From what I remember it was intended to sit next to your router and contained an internal battery, but my Googling skills haven't succeeded in finding it. Anyone remember what I'm on about?
Editception: I think it might have been the 'RCA Airnergy'. Google it.![]()
Last edited by watercooled; 14-02-2013 at 01:24 AM.
pollaxe (14-02-2013)
Reminds me of a post I saw on some forum a while back, some guy in the US was powering his home via an inverter, from batteries he'd charged with his car during the day. Somehow he reasoned it was free.
I think some people just find it too hard to accept they might need to pay a few pennies a year to charge those batteries. Instead, they'd rather spend hundreds/thousands on tons of psuedoscientific hardware and convince themselves its working.
Or, they could have saved themselves a heap of money by just go to a library and borrow a physics textbook before investing time and money into energy projects. Hell, even just googling around your ideas would have turned up useful information. Sounds crazy, I know...
if you want to charge batteries to go `off grid` then get a wind turbine / solar panels and maybe a micro chp unit (but they are not that reliable)
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