Demonstrating Free Energy Systems

Inventors Guide / Investors Guide

As an engineer I love the idea of free energy. In fact I like the idea of free anything, including buy-one-get-one free offers. If you have discovered how to extract energy from the multiverse, channel telepathic waves into a photon converter, or fuse the deuterium in salt water to produce heat,1 then I have absolutely no scientific objections. After all I am an electronics designer, not a physicist; I dont feel upset if you violate some standard Laws of Physics. However, your idea had better work, and be able to be demonstrated as working, before I would be interested in all the theory. Lets treat your free energy system as a black box. In other words theres your stuff inside, which I dont have to know anything about, and there are connections to it. Now the worst possible way of demonstrating such a device is to have ill defined inputs and outputs in power terms. To be clear I want to be able to very easily measure any input power (if necessary) and any output power. I also need to be able to move your equipment. Why? Well there have been fraudsters who have operated equipment up against a false wall with a power delivery shaft running through this wall to drive their equipment. And it would be a trivial matter to run a small power cable through the support structure of a big machine so the system could be run from a hidden mains or battery source. In fact it is also possible to use metal support legs to feed current into a machine. By making the machine transportable this option is removed. In fact wireless chargers for electric vehicles now mean that just an air gap all around is no longer sufficient. Your device has to be movable anywhere of my choosing to avoid the possibility of fraudulent claims. Obviously you are totally trustworthy; I just have a suspicious nature!

Test Case
Lets take the case of Joseph Newman and his energy machine, Big Eureka,2 since I happened to watch a video about it recently. This case has been running for years, with the US patent office refusing to grant a patent, and all the supporters crying foul play and cover-up conspiracies. Why? Simply because the demonstrations were so poorly done. It is an excellent example of how not to proceed! In the first place there is input power from a battery pack. But there is obviously something tricky going on because the current drawn, as shown in the video, is all over the place. It is therefore not possible to measure the input power with the equipment shown. The idea presented is that those tiny little batteries 3 could never drive such a big machine. The

I am not referring to any specific technologies in this paragraph. I just made up some pseudo-scientific sounding nonsense.
2

You can google it and find videos etc. Internet links tend to die quite quickly, but google will find any available material.
3

From memory it was something like 60 to 80 series-connected 9V alkaline batteries.

Leslie Green CEng MIEE

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3 Feb 2013

delivered output power is even more un-measurable.4 It is a flow of water being pumped around, without even a change in height between the input and output feeds. In short we have an unknown input power, an unknown output power, and yet claims of over-unity operation using some as yet unknown application of science. How complicated would it have been to hook the output shaft up to a second-hand car alternator and get measureable electrical output power?

Measurements
It should be obvious that in any power application the measurement of the input and output powers is the most crucial thing. It is therefore correct for people to be sceptical of a design when these measurements are poorly done or entirely absent. Electrical power measurements are not necessarily complicated, but they do need to be done by engineers with specific experience and training. Lets take the case of a pulsating current being drawn from a DC output laboratory bench power supply. In order to calculate the average power being drawn from the supply (when set to constant voltage output) should you measure a) b) c) d) e) f) g) The peak current The mean current The RMS current The mean current multiplied by the crest factor The RMS current divided by the crest factor The integral of the current squared waveform over a complete cycle, as seen on an oscilloscope It wouldnt be possible to derive the power from the current measurement.

This is not actually a very difficult question, and is something that any university course in electronics should have covered in the first year. But if you asked graduate electronics designers a few years or more after leaving university, the number getting the correct answer would probably be horribly low (<10%).5 The trouble is that there are so many specialisations within the electronics field that many engineers would not be familiar enough with such measurements to know the correct answer. So, of course, the answer is to get the measurement done by an engineer with a Masters degree, or better yet a Doctoral degree. NO! This is typically yet another specialisation with even less chance of understanding the problem. Worse still would be getting somebody with a non-related doctorate, such as mathematics, to help with the technical side of things.

There was an excellent post by Paul Zigouras on the Pure Energy Systems website, dated 11 Nov 2012, where he suggested, amongst other good observations, that the power output should be measured with a dynamometer.
5

I wrote a short article about this type of measurement problem entitled Watt do you Mean, or RMS?

Leslie Green CEng MIEE

2 of 3

3 Feb 2013

Demonstration Advice
Make your equipment readily movable. Any input power supply should ideally be DC (with smoothing inductors and capacitors as necessary). Any input power should ideally be removable after the system has been started. Any output power should ideally be DC (with smoothing inductors and capacitors as necessary). If continuous input power is required this should ideally be derivable from the output power to show genuine and significant over-unity performance. DC input power is measured as the product of the fixed input voltage and the mean current.6 DC output power is measured as the product of a fixed output voltage and the mean current (or the RMS current squared times a fixed load resistance). Demonstrate the output power for sufficient time that if the weight of your system was due to Lithium ion rechargeable batteries,7 you have >5 their energy density. Run the system for a sufficient period 8 that you know what chemicals / material is / are being consumed / converted. The emphasis in any demonstration should be on the power output relative to the power input, rather than on how your super-science is better than everybody elses ordinary science. Once you have done all of the above to assure yourself that the device works then get the patent application submitted before showing anyone! Then get nondisclosure agreements signed as necessary.

Investment Advice
If you assume that the inventor is a well intentioned crackpot, or fraudster, you are likely to be right in the vast majority of all cases. Modern physics is so complicated that factual information can easily be woven into fallacious arguments that can fool non-specialists. Forget the science completely and concentrate on the engineering: power in and power out. And remember that even specialist measurement advisors can be conned by smooth talking fraudsters. Anyone who is insulted about you ensuring against fraud, as outlined above, should be avoided and/or exposed.
6

Check with an oscilloscope that the voltage is constant. If the current is also constant then the ammeter can be either mean or RMS sensing. If the current is pulsating then do not use an RMS sensing meter. Note that a mean sensing meter can still give an incorrect reading on a pulsating current due to its (undefined) frequency response. Remove current pulsations with a filter for best accuracy.
7

Based on a WB-LYP100AHA Lithium ion cell giving 100AHr at around 2.7V and weighing 3.5kg we get 77WHr/kg. If you can produce more than 400WHr/kg then that makes a convincing argument. A 50kg machine will therefore need to supply 20kWHr to be convincing by this reasoning. Even a 1 hour demonstration is typically going to be too short.
8

This may be weeks or months of operation.

Leslie Green CEng MIEE

3 of 3

3 Feb 2013