Electricity Collected From the Air

[w5hro]

The attached article below was recently published in Power Electronics Technology.

[W1RKW]

I think if one lived near a EM source such as a power line or transmitter one could store enough energy in a battery to power whatever through induction.  I live near K1JJ.  I wonder if I could charge a battery with his signal

[WA1GFZ]

I'm petting my kitty

[W7SOE]

I'm petting my kitty

Is that a euphemism?

 

Rich

[Ed/KB1HYS]

Does the effect exist, yes.

Can it be used for real usefull power (on a home owner level) - probably not.

[KB2WIG]

Franklin designed a electrostatic motor, if I remember corectly.....


klc

[W1IA]

I'm petting my kitty

I'm kicking my kitty, only kidding
Cat allergies.......Its late and I'm bored.....zzzZZZZzzzzz

[W1TAV]

I have been collecting electricity from the air for about 15 years now.. However one of the "Life Time" carbon Fiber Blades broke off the other day... 

Photo cells have been with us for 60 or so years now and we can't seem to get our collective thumbs out of our butts to get the cost down (thank you BP) 

Just keep in mind, a generator does not make electricity any more then does a water pump make water...  So it's always there, it just the means that we use to make it useful.. 

Steve W1TAV

[KA1ZGC]

Photo cells have been with us for 60 or so years now and we can't seem to get our collective thumbs out of our butts to get the cost down (thank you BP) 

How is it BP's fault that only a couple hundred watts per square foot of sunlight reach the ground? Solar panels will never do any better than that on the Earth's surface.

You could make them free and they'd still be a waste.

[W1IA]

I think if one lived near a EM source such as a power line or transmitter one could store enough energy in a battery to power whatever through induction.  I live near K1JJ.  I wonder if I could charge a battery with his signal

You still have hair Bob?

[WA3VJB]

Franklin designed a electrostatic motor, if I remember corectly.....

Pete CWA was one of Franklin's contemporaries. I'm surprised he has not checked in here to say the article has already been posted, since he thoughtfully does that regularly.

Notwithstanding, here's a preview of Ben Franklin's example of Electricity Collected From the Air ca. 1752

attached his kite to a silk string, tying an iron key at the other end. Next, they tied a thin metal wire from the key and inserted the wire into a Leyden jar, a container for storing an electrical charge.

[WA1GFZ]

All about the Jar Paul and integrating the pulse down to a useful voltage.
HMMM how many poles in that PDM filter???

[K6JEK]

...

Photo cells have been with us for 60 or so years now and we can't seem to get our collective thumbs out of our butts to get the cost down (thank you BP)  
...
Steve W1TAV

They're working on it.  They're working on it.  The cost of silicon panels has come down so much the thin film guys are worrying.  Their pitch "We're inefficient but cheap" is not so appealing if the silicon panels are efficient and just as cheap.  SunPower, purveyor of expensive, efficient panels says $1/watt cost is just around the corner.  Just last year First Solar, the biggest thin film company, was bragging about that.  

When they hit grid parity we'll be having a different conversation.  That's when it's just as cheap to put panels on the roof as buying the juice from grid.  Japan with its expensive power is close now.  If the cost curves keep doing what they're doing, we'll hit that in the US in few more years.  IIRC, the magic number is something like $1/watt installed, not $1/watt cost.  That's another factor of two away.

Here is SunPower bragging:

 http://cleantechnica.com/2010/11/16/sunpower-ramps-up-production-soon-down-near-1-a-watt/


1020 watts per square meter at sea level

[WA1GFZ]

Well it is under 50 outside and about 80 inside I feel a nap coming on after raking the back yard. Direct conversion to heat free since about 1985.

[Ed/KB1HYS]

1020 watts per square meter at sea level

I believe that 1kw/sqmeter is only at the equator.  The slant range through the atmosphere causes loss the higher you get in Latitude.  Up here in the NE we're only getting 5-600 watts per meter.

Even if the solar panel itself was very efficient, there's not a lot of stuff that uses DC, so you still need an inverter of some type, and a storage mechanism (batteries most likely). Both those elements introduce loss and reduce the over all efficiency of the system. The effect is cumulative as well.  According to Wiki silicon cells are APPROACHING 29% efficiency, commonly available panels are running 10-15% now.  So for that ideal 1KW in you get 150 watts out of the cells, then you charge a battery (so you can turn on your lights after dark) and get 85% of that 150 watts (down to 124 watts now). Then you pull the power out of an inverter to run an electric appliance.  Inverters can have anywhere from 20-90% efficiency depending on the load. Lets assume an average of 50% from the inverter, now you've got 62 watts of real usable power for a system efficiency of 6%.   That does not include low solar days (very real here in NE) or losses because your panels get covered in dust/dirt etc.  The only way to compensate for low efficiency is to make the whole system larger so if your house needs 1000kWhrs of power (about the national average) then you'd need 17 square meters of solar panels plus a bit for low output days etc. Call it 25 square meters of panels (265square ft)  at $300-$500 per sq meter thats an average cost (for panels only) of $10K plus batteries, inverters, installation & construction call it $20k.  
Given I pay ~ $120 per month for my electric power, thats about a 14 year period before I see any return on investment for going solar.   Plus I have to maintain my own system, replace batteries (car batteries are good for about 3 years (how reliable do you want your power?) so thats around 3-5 sets of batteries during the period meaning that maintenance will push the ROI back another couple years...

Ok So why do I want to go solar electric?  

Passive solar heat, now that's another animal all together.

[W1RKW]

I wasn't able to find it at this moment but some time ago I stumbled across a crystal radio set that used an audio amplifier that was powered by a strong carrier.  No battery power or power source used whatsoever.  If I find it I'll post it.

Brent, yes, I still have some hair.

[VE3GZB]

!! LOL !!

[K6JEK]

1020 watts per square meter at sea level

I believe that 1kw/sqmeter is only at the equator.  The slant range through the atmosphere causes loss the higher you get in Latitude.  Up here in the NE we're only getting 5-600 watts per meter.

Even if the solar panel itself was very efficient, there's not a lot of stuff that uses DC, so you still need an inverter of some type, and a storage mechanism (batteries most likely). Both those elements introduce loss and reduce the over all efficiency of the system. The effect is cumulative as well.  According to Wiki silicon cells are APPROACHING 29% efficiency, commonly available panels are running 10-15% now.  So for that ideal 1KW in you get 150 watts out of the cells, then you charge a battery (so you can turn on your lights after dark) and get 85% of that 150 watts (down to 124 watts now). Then you pull the power out of an inverter to run an electric appliance.  Inverters can have anywhere from 20-90% efficiency depending on the load. Lets assume an average of 50% from the inverter, now you've got 62 watts of real usable power for a system efficiency of 6%.   That does not include low solar days (very real here in NE) or losses because your panels get covered in dust/dirt etc.  The only way to compensate for low efficiency is to make the whole system larger so if your house needs 1000kWhrs of power (about the national average) then you'd need 17 square meters of solar panels plus a bit for low output days etc. Call it 25 square meters of panels (265square ft)  at $300-$500 per sq meter thats an average cost (for panels only) of $10K plus batteries, inverters, installation & construction call it $20k.  
Given I pay ~ $120 per month for my electric power, thats about a 14 year period before I see any return on investment for going solar.   Plus I have to maintain my own system, replace batteries (car batteries are good for about 3 years (how reliable do you want your power?) so thats around 3-5 sets of batteries during the period meaning that maintenance will push the ROI back another couple years...

Ok So why do I want to go solar electric?  

Passive solar heat, now that's another animal all together.

Ed,

I agree the math doesn't work yet without subsidies. Still your numbers are too pessimistic.

Commonly available panels are now in the high teens to low twenties in efficiency.  The inverters are now in the high 90's like 98% efficient.  If you're grid connected, the grid is your battery.  This works out well for everybody because you're generating lots of power right when it's needed, summer afternoons, so the utility companies don't need as much from the notably inefficient and expensive peaking plants and it works out for you because they'll pay you 3x the average rate for the power you generate then. At night, utilities have excess power available at bargain basement prices.  Indeed, an article about upgrading the US grid in last month's Scientific American quoted a utility company executive saying they sometimes pay customers to take power at night.  I don't quite get this but that was the quote.  If you aren't grid connected that's another matter.  If solar made up more than a small percentage of the juice the utility companies are buying it would really matter.  We should live so long.

And you don't need solar panels on your roof.  But if the curves are right in a few years it will be just as cheap maybe even cheaper to get the juice from your own panels as from the power company especially if the utilities do what they want to do, widely institute time of use metering. 

[WA1GFZ]

Ed, Last time I checked I came up with 15 years ROA also. Then you have to consider the interest if you invested that money and got 5%. It cost me $4K to build a 400 square foot passive solar room in 1985. I figure I save at least 250 gallons of fuel a year. The added pleasure of a house in the mid 70s in the middle of the freezing winter any time the sun is out. Imagine the extra fuel that would take. 1 blower a thermostat a relay and a LV transformer.
The heat has not been since early this morning and it is below 40 outside.

[Opcom]

There's an article in an old Scientific American about putting a wire in the air and taking power from it, but the current was so small as to be practically useless. The article began by stating that the earth and atmosphere is like a giant Van De Graaf machine. It's not junk science but taking electrical power right from the very air seems impractical and merely a revisitation of old experiments. I want a federal grant to revisit old experiments. As Director of Research, my salary will of course need to be about $350K per year. Now that's progress!

[KC2ZFA]

no, the work referred to in the posted article is legit and extremely interesting
(and it doesn't reference Tesla and other old-wives tales about getting something
for nothing).

It's the posted article that's junk, not the science it misrepresents.

[KA1ZGC]

I agree the math doesn't work yet without subsidies.

That's the practical equivalent of "useless". It can't save you money without costing me money. That's not saving, that's stealing.

[K6JEK]

I agree the math doesn't work yet without subsidies.

That's the practical equivalent of "useless". It can't save you money without costing me money. That's not saving, that's stealing.

In the long run I sure agree with you.  To jump start something there's a case to be made.  In the US we do huge agriculture subsidies for example.  Why?  We also subsidize ethanol while putting a tariff on ethanol from South America.  To avoid retaliation from Brazil for our cotton subsidies we subsidize Brazil's cotton farmers.  How about that?  We US taxpayers subsidize our own cotton farmers and Brazil's too. And of course we subsidize fossil fuels in various ways. 

I wonder if we could ever unwind all this and maybe find out what things actually cost.

[KA1ZGC]

I agree the math doesn't work yet without subsidies.

That's the practical equivalent of "useless". It can't save you money without costing me money. That's not saving, that's stealing.

In the long run I sure agree with you.  To jump start something there's a case to be made.  In the US we do huge agriculture subsidies for example.  Why?  We also subsidize ethanol while putting a tariff on ethanol from Brazil.  And of course we subsidize fossil fuels in various ways.  I wonder if we could ever unwind all this and maybe find out what things actually cost.

All valid debates to be had, but not here, and not quite apples-to-apples.

Jump-starting something is what Venture Capital is all about. There are literally thousands of groups sitting on barrels of their own cash waiting for the next emerging technology to invest in. Nobody has to steal from me to make that happen. The various VC firms are mostly sitting on the sidelines with respect to solar because they don't see a chance to grow their investment by at least 10%.

When they see that chance (and a solid business plan that has a realistic horizon for profitability), private money will start flowing, and we can stop it with these stupid "green energy" subsidies in some attempt to manufacture a customer base instead of a sustainable product line.

If one potential VC after another all turn it down, it's because they don't see a chance of success, so it's much wiser to ask yourself what's missing and take the time to address that than to put your hand out to Big Brother for a premature payday (which is precisely what happened in the mortgage market, and we now see the results).

I liken it to Neil Young's '59 Lincoln. He spent all kinds of time and money converting that car to a hybrid. Last week, while it was in storage in his warehouse, it caught fire. All those toxins from the batteries, motors, and whatever else was stored nearby were released into the air and water, doing orders of magnitude more damage than the car itself would have done if he'd just left it stock and driven it.

Not cheering for his loss, but the irony there is not lost on me. As Buck Murdock once said: "irony can be pretty ironic at times".

[K6JEK]

(left off ZGC post for brevity).
Neil Young's Lincoln went up in smoke?  Too bad, I wanted to see the thing.

I'm not sure we disagree on much, maybe on this point.  I'd say if everyone else is playing dirty you better play dirty too or you're going to get crushed, either that or find a way to clean up the whole game and good luck with that.  By playing dirty I mean distorting markets with subsidies and tariffs of one sort or another.  My jaundiced belief is free markets exist more as an ideal than as a reality.  Subsidies and tariffs are the norm not the exception.  Better get yours if you can.

Why distort?  Because you don't care about the "greater good" which is best served by global, unfettered competition but about some lesser good like building a big manufacturing base in your country so later you're the only game in town, or simply lining the pockets of your friends, or making damned sure that in the next war you aren't  missing some critical domestic resource.

And there are some things that markets aren't good at that you might want to promote.  That's the noble side to subsidies and tariffs but I have a hard time being idealistic enough to talk about it.

And there are the infamous "externalities",  real costs borne by somebody else  so they aren't reflected in the cost of the good or service.

Compelling for me, though, is simply the first one.  Play the game, the real game not the idealistic, fictional game or get squashed.