The Future of Free Energy?

Interesting video. Love to see him get more funding and provide real world demonstrations instead of small scale projected scenarios. Also would like to see cost associated, or projected costs after it becomes readily available. It has to be something the average consumer can afford.

Who the hell has 200k they can invest in a wind turbine for their back yard? It needs to be feasible.
 
British invention, which may save the world and you can do ANYTHING with it and I mean anything.
How soon before its wasted by the British government and given to the US and China.
 
free energy, but how much is the system going to run?

the batteries are the biggest reason I haven't gone off the deep end with solar panels, selling my energy back to the power company always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
 
stealthy123 said:
free energy, but how much is the system going to run?

the batteries are the biggest reason I haven't gone off the deep end with solar panels, selling my energy back to the power company always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason.
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what? just the idea rubs me so much the right way... ;)
 
As long as we don't need the empire state building to generate enough useable power to run a light bulb, then this guy might be on to something.
 
So this guy thinks that normal is only 49 year or less?

He shows a nice, Apple looking room vs an early morning silhouetted vent stack to help sell an attitude.

Bias.
 
very interesting, though i wonder how "real" it is.

especially the night vision stuff. it appears to work on basically the same principle as all other night vision optics - so how come i was out patrolling with night vision goggles instead of oakleys with that film for lenses?
 
Call me cynical, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this is going to come to pass with huge ass oil and electric companies in the way...
 
FndTheRver said:
As long as we don't need the empire state building to generate enough useable power to run a light bulb, then this guy might be on to something.
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Agreed, he doesn't really mention where these films stand compared to current photovoltaics. Can't say covering a house in PV is really going to be sufficient to run your household, let alone skyscrapers.
 
pablouk said:
British invention, which may save the world and you can do ANYTHING with it and I mean anything.
How soon before its wasted by the British government and given to the US and China.
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Yeah becuase Texas and Florida are in the UK. :rolleyes:
 
hiodie said:
Agreed, he doesn't really mention where these films stand compared to current photovoltaics. Can't say covering a house in PV is really going to be sufficient to run your household, let alone skyscrapers.
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If the film could convert photons to electrons at the same efficiency as modern PV cells, then it would be more than sufficient. However, I doubt this is the case.
 
So he's basically just talking about fancy solar panels.

Everyone agrees that's where we're headed, but the technology isn't there yet to make it viable.

Maybe this is a long-winded way of saying he has viable solar panel technology on the horizon?
 
Kuraudo said:
So he's basically just talking about fancy solar panels.

Everyone agrees that's where we're headed, but the technology isn't there yet to make it viable.

Maybe this is a long-winded way of saying he has viable solar panel technology on the horizon?
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We can only hope. Solar is one of the few alternative power sources that is actually making large improvements. Every few years new tech or methods are discovered that increase the efficiency of the panels. We need to see more improvements in batteries as well for this to work.
 
Kind of cool, I'd like to see more details.

seeing at night by converting IR to electrons ... basically night vision goggles. The problem with this however is the IR that is released depends upon the difference in temperature... meaning that a big fucking brickwall in front of you which is the same temperature as the air will literally be invisible as you crash into it.

Also making IR solar panels seems neat, not sure about how effective they'd be. Might simply be one of those things that they're not terribly efficient but you cover a whole house with them, and you don't need to point them at the sun, etc they'll actually be quite useful. Again devil is in the details, this video was a happy feel to it, but that's it.

E-box/battery? It holds electrons until they're ready to be used? Sounds like what a capacitor does, I guess they came up with a nano-version of that..

I'd like to see where this goes though. If I can put a film on my windows and make enough energy to light a single light a tiny LED its still energy that I wasn't making before.
 
Lith1um said:
Ever heard of LFTR's? Did you know that you can get a master's degree in nuclear engineering and never spend any time on the subject?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3rL08J7fDA
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I think what he is trying to say is that oil and electric companies are very rich and powerful to the point that they will try their hardest to hinder other ideas and methods from succeeding. If that is what he is trying to say, I think he definitely has a valid point. Just look at how much money was pumped by oil companies to try to throw a monkey wrench into the theory of climate change by trying to confuse the general public. They were lobbying the US congress, senate and government(s) around the US/world with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Remember, if this energy idea has the potential to work as well as the guy in the tedtalk video says it does, it will put a fairly big hole in the pockets of oil and electric companies. Do you really think they will let a group of scientists come in and freely do that with open hands?? That is why he is cynical with how the idea will work out. Oil/electric companies have too many political/monetary power at the moment.
 
This is a neat idea but the guy is just selling hopes and dreams and blowing smoke up people's asses. FREE? he said it's going to be FREE? So carbon nanotubes cost nothing to produce? The machines that make them don't cost anything? The labor in installing all this shit is free? What about that super high tech battery? That's also free?

Give me a frickin break. This guy is CEO of a nanotube company... So how is his company going to run on FREE. I can't think of a company that has an income statement that says "Revenue = 0, Cost = 0, Net Income = 0. We don't need money, we run on hopes and dreams and our employees are unicorns so they don't need paychecks or health insurance!"
 
blade12 said:
I think what he is trying to say is that oil and electric companies are very rich and powerful to the point that they will try their hardest to hinder other ideas and methods from succeeding. If that is what he is trying to say, I think he definitely has a valid point. Just look at how much money was pumped by oil companies to try to throw a monkey wrench into the theory of climate change by trying to confuse the general public. They were lobbying the US congress, senate and government(s) around the US/world with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Remember, if this energy idea has the potential to work as well as the guy in the tedtalk video says it does, it will put a fairly big hole in the pockets of oil and electric companies. Do you really think they will let a group of scientists come in and freely do that with open hands?? That is why he is cynical with how the idea will work out. Oil/electric companies have too many political/monetary power at the moment.
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I understand, and I agree. My point was that the fully functional LFTR reactor program was scuttled because it would never create daughter products which were suitable for the atomic weapons program.

GE has everything invested in their present water cooled reactor technologies, and universities have displaced LFTR's from their curriculum.

It was the ultimate conflict of interest and it literally changed the world in more ways than one. The world would literally be a different place with cheap, abundant energy, that can be built in places that lack major waterways. Present day nuke plants require an ocean, river, or lake. LFTR's can be built anywhere, in community sized plants. Desalinization could be virtually free, desert areas could be transformed. People could be fed. Everyone could drive electric vehicles, we could have dirt cheap heating, air conditioning, and hot water in our homes.

There wouldn't be Chernobyl, or Fukusima. LFTR's can burn our nuclear waste, can burn our nuclear weapons stock pile.
 
Seventyfive said:
This is a neat idea but the guy is just selling hopes and dreams and blowing smoke up people's asses. FREE? he said it's going to be FREE? So carbon nanotubes cost nothing to produce? The machines that make them don't cost anything? The labor in installing all this shit is free? What about that super high tech battery? That's also free?

Give me a frickin break. This guy is CEO of a nanotube company... So how is his company going to run on FREE. I can't think of a company that has an income statement that says "Revenue = 0, Cost = 0, Net Income = 0. We don't need money, we run on hopes and dreams and our employees are unicorns so they don't need paychecks or health insurance!"
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If I was that guy, and once the tech was stable and I made my money back, I would sell the stuff at cost.

He does less than that, he can shove that picture in his wallet where the sun don't shine.
 
No wires just powered by the earths atmosphere. We do need clean energy, water and food sources, Alot of technologies are supressed by corporations through buy outs and then filing them permanently. For example electric car could have been out 10 years ago, Can guess who was behind stopping it this long, Big oil campanies. There needs to be solutions to basic human needs. I for one would love to see it happen. Until you get rid of corporate greed its going to take a long time to get anywhere. I wish Tesla was alive today.
 
I have a inherent distrust of people who use nonsensical units of measure. 'This film can save you 64 Shuttle Discovery's worth of energy per galactic arcsecond' sounds too much like marketing gobbledygook!
 
I think guys like this are part of the real problem. There's things like this every few years. We are enticed that technology is going to save us soon. So we don't need to feel bad by doing business as usual in the meantime. We can continue over consumption and waste because the solution is just around the corner.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. The solution is making hard choices now. Perhaps there was some technology in the presentation that can be part of the solution. But there is no miracle technology that is going to save us. Only we can do that.
 
Night_Hawk-19 said:
No wires just powered by the earths atmosphere. We do need clean energy, water and food sources, Alot of technologies are supressed by corporations through buy outs and then filing them permanently. For example electric car could have been out 10 years ago, Can guess who was behind stopping it this long, Big oil campanies. There needs to be solutions to basic human needs. I for one would love to see it happen. Until you get rid of corporate greed its going to take a long time to get anywhere. I wish Tesla was alive today.
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Don't forget one thing though: electric cars need electricity to function. Where does the electricity come from? *DUN DUN DUN* Coal powerplants.:p

It lands you in a catch 22. You may be better off not putting more pressure on the coal powerplants to supply more electricity even though oil is a major concern as it is.

Quite frankly, nuclear fission is the ONLY current possibility that can provide you the amount of electricity/power necessary to make a serious dent in the energy grid (nuclear fusion being the safer and better method, but we don't currently have the technology in place to do wide-scale nuclear fusion that is efficient with good turnover ratio).
 
<conspiracy theory>
I think this and other free energy technologies already exist. Of course, the respective world governments hold them back from us because it would destroy the economy as we know it. How many people would be out of work if there is no gas, oil, or electricity companies and their various distribution channels? That would be a ton of jobs on the line and not just the rich energy companies hurting from it. Of course, they will all be released to us as we run out of those sources of energy so as to ease us into a different kind of economy.
</conspiracy theory>

<human nature>
If we had unlimited and free energy, people would get bored and just try to kill each other off even more than we already do. In fact, I think I should go pretend to kill my friends over and over again just for fun until someone actually attacks me and I have to kill them in real life (aka Halo, CoD, GoW, etc...) Now, where did I put that BFG... I think it's powered by some carbon nano-tube based light-energy pickup circuits, btw. :D
</human nature>
 
I have watched shows and videos on new bleeding edge technologies since before the show "beyond 2000". I have read about all of these new breakthroughs in battery technology, solar panels, cold fusion, fusion reactors and on and on and on. When in the hell do these things hit the market? NEVER because they are so so damn expensive nobody on earth can afford them. I am so sick of hearing these speeches on this stuff, all of these speeches are all about we need grant money we are right on the edge of a major breakthrough. BULL SHIT.

I looked into getting solar panels for my house a 5kwat system. Wait for it................. $29,000 and with subsidies (which means my neighbors paying for my solar array) it would cost only LOL $10,000, what a relief. This would approximately save me $90.00 a month on the high end. Then since I am in Florida I would have to have insurance on such panels and the fact that my property taxes would go up. I might be able to save $500.00 a yeah wooohoooo. So it would only take me 20 years to pay it off.

WHAT A DEAL. so every time I see or hear or read about a new breakthrough technology I say when and how much. Then all I hear is crickets.
 
Somehow I doubt the governments or the corporations behind them will allow stuff like this to go fullscale.
 
Seventyfive said:
This is a neat idea but the guy is just selling hopes and dreams and blowing smoke up people's asses. FREE? he said it's going to be FREE? So carbon nanotubes cost nothing to produce? The machines that make them don't cost anything? The labor in installing all this shit is free? What about that super high tech battery? That's also free?

Give me a frickin break. This guy is CEO of a nanotube company... So how is his company going to run on FREE. I can't think of a company that has an income statement that says "Revenue = 0, Cost = 0, Net Income = 0. We don't need money, we run on hopes and dreams and our employees are unicorns so they don't need paychecks or health insurance!"
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Allow me to get philosphical for a second, but yes absolutly all that stuff could be free. Even the man power. Its only the idea of money that keeps us from doing these things. Money absolutly has no effect the ability for the work to be done, it only affects our ability to choose whether or not the work gets done. Money's only purpose is to limit us, thats what gives it its value.

Getting back on the subject of renewable energy, I have wondered what would be the long term effects of using massive amounts of wind and solar energy. We know energy has to be converted. So if we put windmills everywhere how would that affect the weather systems as the "wind" will be absorbed by the windmills which could affect the atmospheric pressure. Likewise solar energy hits the Earth and the vast majority of it is transferred into heat that heats the Earths surface and in turn causes atmospheric pressure. So if we started converting alot of the Sun's heat into storable energy what would be the long term affects of that?

Could we change weather patterns and cause heating issues on the planet if we convert too much wind and solar energy into stored energy?
 
The key word to future technology is feasibility. There is no such thing as free energy. You need to pay for a device to harness this available energy (harnessing of free energy) and the best method of doing so it wind, solar and tide.

And believe it or not, the first step begins with "reducing wastage" and this begins with us.
 
He starts off sounding reasonable, talking about a few cool technologies and then goes WAY OFF into neverland thinking this will solve world energy problems. Lost me when his eyes got real big saying I--I will BEAM my light-power directly to you from my gleaming glass power tower.... LOL Justin Hall-Tripping.
 
It all comes down to cost. Even if the efficiency is mediocre it it's cheap enough to break even or better than grid power, in a reasonable amount of time, it's better. If not it's not worth a whole lot.
 
drlava said:
He starts off sounding reasonable, talking about a few cool technologies and then goes WAY OFF into neverland thinking this will solve world energy problems. Lost me when his eyes got real big saying I--I will BEAM my light-power directly to you from my gleaming glass power tower.... LOL Justin Hall-Tripping.
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Yes, but at some point even electricty went from being a wild possiblity to a reality. For all we know we could be swimming in a galactic see of some unknown energy that can be freely tapped anywhere anytime.
 
Seventyfive said:
This is a neat idea but the guy is just selling hopes and dreams and blowing smoke up people's asses. FREE? he said it's going to be FREE? So carbon nanotubes cost nothing to produce? The machines that make them don't cost anything? The labor in installing all this shit is free? What about that super high tech battery? That's also free?

Give me a frickin break. This guy is CEO of a nanotube company... So how is his company going to run on FREE. I can't think of a company that has an income statement that says "Revenue = 0, Cost = 0, Net Income = 0. We don't need money, we run on hopes and dreams and our employees are unicorns so they don't need paychecks or health insurance!"
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This.

stealthy123 said:
If I was that guy, and once the tech was stable and I made my money back, I would sell the stuff at cost.

He does less than that, he can shove that picture in his wallet where the sun don't shine.
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And this.

I was intrigued until he pulled the picture out. He feels guilty for something in his life and his "quest" makes him feeeeeeeel better.

Be honest, make a dollar and sleep well.
 
Impressive stuff. Hmmm, maybe I'll replace a wooden wall with a bank of electric producing windows to power my folding farm ;)
 
Wind costs ~4x as much as conventional technologies (nuclear, coal).
Solar costs ~5x as much as conventional technologies.

Nothing is "free." If these technologies were even remotely cost effective, we would have already switched to them.

When the efficiency improves to equal conventional tech, then we will switch. Until then, the TED should take its hippie pipe dreams and keep them in the pipe.
 
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