It just seems funny that only the fringe sees it that way. Using a known term that is respected and well known in it's common use is hiding behind the real point, that there is no energy being "harvested" that isn't coming from some where else. And you like many before you and many who will follow if you don't do this in the open and with real metrics of reporting are only hurting those that really may come up with something unknown. If they do or if you do you are shooting your self in the foot by making claims that can be easily proven not to be as you present them.
One of the things I did as a teenager was hang around a local guy that by training was a metallurgist, but he spent all of his inheritance(he came from a wealthy family and was an only child) trying to find ways of doing what your doing, and failing every time. He died lonely and broke financially. I have no "chip" on my shoulder, just a logical thought process that understands there is no "free energy" out there to harvest. Even solar and wind is a result of the power of our sun, it doesn't come from no where to be harvested.
So I learned at an early age there is no "free" energy to be had, only energy being pulled from some where else at the expense of that other source. I'll ask the same question of you here that was deleted at AAC, what is the efficiency of your motor when it isn't in "generating mode"? When your not creating your "harvested" power.
Okay, I'll give this one last shot and try to be very clear and detailed in the process. This will paint a much larger picture of what is going on and my role in it. This is taking a lot of my time and attention, trying to justify my activities for what are personal projects, but if it clarifies things for others then it’s worth it.
The term coefficient of performance is traditionally used for heat pumps, but as a simple quotient of ‘energy out’ divided by ‘user input energy’, it can be applied to any form of energy.
Since it is the common heat pump that displays this type of ‘open’ behaviour, it has been used for that and, as electrical systems that harvest energy are not commonplace or much known about, then it is not generally applied to them. But for those researching open electro-mechanical systems, and therefore energy harvesting, it is a very applicable and relevant term. To say it can’t be used is like saying one can only use the quantity ‘acceleration’ for motorbikes on the M1 in England in the summer and not for the tip of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon jungle. A physical quantity has no preference for where it is applied, so long as it is mathematically and contextually consistent, and only humans have established such preferences and conventions.
Saying that a solar panel has a CoP of infinity, while strictly true, is not helpful or meaningful to anyone so we only use the more appropriate term of efficiency, but there is no reason why we can’t use CoP where it is useful. Sticking with something one way because it hasn’t often been done another way is pretty much the definition of stagnation. Not being aware of something does not mean it doesn't exist.
An example of such an electro-mechanical application of CoP, and some of the ideas I mention below, is here:
https://novam-research.com/resource...trical-Regauging-to-increase-COP-21343253.pdf
Now regarding the term ‘harvesting’. As an analogy with the farmer’s harvest, the term means to gather something in one place and transfer it to another, not to create something ‘ex nihilo', out of nothing.
For this to happen a system has to be an open one with cross-boundary flows of energy or matter (which are the same thing). In fact, most systems are naturally open unless deliberately engineered to be closed which is not easy to obtain in practice. Even an internal combustion engine has in reality a flow of heat to the outside, but we approximate it by talking about adiabatic heat transfer, suggesting that only useful work leaves the system. It's not true but more convenient. Usually, energy drawn across a boundary into an open system is converted to another form, but this is not always the case.
So energy harvesting is a legitimate area of research, the basis of every green and alternative energy system and indeed an official area of discussion on the AAC forum, as listed under Power Electronics, as one of the forum’s moderators happily chatted to me about.
The fact that we understand what is happening in a solar panel or a heat pump means that no one questions these open systems. However, when the suggestion is made that a particular configuration of an electrical or electro-mechanical system MIGHT also behave as an open system, drawing additional energy in from ‘the environment', then everyone gets into a flap and falls about wailing due to their worldview somehow being threatened or disassembled.
The device I'm working on is not in fact a motor, but more like a generator, so your question about the efficiency of my ‘motor’, when it’s not in generating mode, is not relevant. However, the device does display one property of a motor in that there is a driven rotating mass.
The function of a motor is to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy expressed as output shaft torque. With my rotor, I haven’t even begun to work on how to extract its kinetic energy, inductively or otherwise, and when I do I expect the overall efficiency will move towards 90+%.
The rotor’s function is twofold. It acts as a trigger for the electromagnetic stators and also contributes the magnetic flux from its permanent magnets to the solenoids which will, in turn, generate the back EMF pulses when their fields collapse.
The present efficiency is brought down by the presence of other ancillary circuits that are required and my figure at this stage only refers to the ‘battery to voltage transient’ conversion and is surprisingly hard to measure or even calculate accurately, due in part to the microsecond rise times.
So what, I hope you are thinking, is so special about voltage transients?
Although exploring theories about what is happening in a device like this are misplaced at this stage, one can still flirt with possibilities (see above paper). In part this is to consider whether what MIGHT be happening is consistent with the current worldview or at odds with it. It also helps drive motivation when there is little else to draw on.
There are various theories about how such as system can behave in an open way and where the energy could be drawn from. I will just mention a key one here and that is to do with ‘non-equilibrium systems’, as defined by the Chemistry Nobel prize winner Ilya Prigogine for his work on self-organising and dissipative structures. In systems that are far from equilibrium, entropy can be reversed so this is a modification, an adjunct, to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This is how life itself can emerge - order out of chaos and disorder instead of the natural trend the other way. It is suggested that one method of creating such a non-equilibrium state in an electrical system is with a voltage transient or gradient that stresses the local ‘phase space’.
I stress that the work I’m doing is NOT testing any of these ideas, nor any other in the hypothetico-deductive method of scientific enquiry, so beloved of grant-funded institutions and universities. To do so is way beyond my facilities and resources. What I am doing is firmly in the inductive methodology which, historically was far more significant than the other, and the foundation of many of Science’s great leaps. In these, it was often the ‘residual data’, which didn’t fit in with the current theory, that led to them. An example here is the retrograde motion of Mars that led to the overturning of the Geocentric view of the solar system, or the Universe as it was perceived at the time.
In the inductive process, a phenomenon is observed which does not fit the current paradigm and which others then try to replicate. If gradually the phenomenon is replicated then a body of data grows until a generalised observation or pattern is achieved. Then the hypothesising and theory building can start with subsequent deductive testing etc.
My journey on this device began when I spoke to an engineer in another country who had built a device that he was using to power a large proportion of the lights in his home, due to the fact that his local power infrastructure was so painfully inadequate and unreliable. The fact that the local authorities would jump on his head if they knew is why he chooses to keep his identity quiet, and Governments don’t normally jump on your head unless they have something significant to lose or fear.
He himself was inspired by the work of others so, in a real way, there has been a process of attempted replication going on for at least a couple of decades and some good findings have accrued along the way. But that is not enough for an open-minded sceptic like myself, so I decided to try and replicate it and, so far, I would say the results are interesting but inconclusive but warrant my taking it into the next phase with a series of upgrades.
My role here is to confirm, or not, a measurable effect and not to ‘a priori’ predict what might, or should, happen based on current understanding. To do so is not Science at all.
So what would a measurable effect look like? It would most likely show as an external resistive load (e.g. a bank of lights) being fed from a pair of batteries, (continually rotating drive and charge batteries), and which did not run down over an extended period. This is what has been reported by a few others who appear to have the appropriate skills, know what they are doing and have clear results to share. Since the actual level of charge in a battery is hard to measure directly, one can instead measure its open-circuit voltage as an indicator of its internal chemical state.
If I get statistically significant positive results then I will write it all up, together with some theoretical considerations, and share it freely to those places where there is an openness to such findings (AAC won’t be one of them). If the findings are negative then I will be happy to know that I found that out for myself and move on to other interests, of which I have many. Meanwhile, I will employ the various skills I honed in my career in Radiation Physics and Dosimetry to best effect in this investigation.
If you go outside on a warm, bright day and turn your face to the Sun you can feel the heat on your skin. However, in a career such as mine I was continually dealing with radiations, both particulate and EM, that can never be felt by the human being, except perhaps as symptoms of high dose damage. That doesn’t mean they are not there. At any moment countless trillions of virtual and ‘real’ particles are passing through your body: pi mesons, muons, protons, positrons, neutrinos and so on. In addition, every particle in the cosmos arises out of the quantum vacuum, an understanding that developed since the 1920s.
While the Vacuum is glibly taken to be a sort of random background noise, with little significance to macro energy systems, coherence and temporary ‘violations’ of the 2nd Law (as in dissipative structures) can be induced in this background flux to allow short bursts of energy to flow into everyday space and conductive systems, just as virtual particles are continually popping in and out of existence in our ‘real’ space to form electrons, protons and everything else.
This pumping of energy into our concrete reality is itself a problem and dilemma for Science, the so-called ‘Source Charge Problem’. Every point charge in the Universe is continually pouring out EM energy in every direction without absorbing light waves, despite the invariance of Maxwell’s equations. This contradicts the 1st Law - a sort of Prime Mover contradiction that is quietly swept under the carpet. The simple answer is that every point charge derives its energy from the Vacuum polarisation and we are unable to take the line of causation back beyond that.
It is a viable possibility then that this bottomless source of particles and fields can be induced to self-organise itself when non-equilibrium states persist (back to Prigogine and transients). Similarly, work on EVOs (Exotic Vacuum Objects) is indicating this process when, for example, re-entrant jets are formed in water cavitation. To put it another way, under certain conditions, the otherwise random Vacuum field can briefly ‘burb’ some coherent energy out into an open receptive macro system. If you want perpetual motion then look no further than the objects around you (as in the above mentioned Source Charge Problem) instead of someone trying to form a closed motor-generator feedback loop, and failing miserably.
Yes I agree with you that there is no ‘free energy’ available, in the sense that you mean it, but there is an infinite amount of ‘freely available energy’ and our human role and input is to develop such systems that will facilitate a practical and constructive flow gradient.
So the idea that we are literally immersed in energy, mostly unseen and unfelt, is completely consistent with my training, career and experience and the disciplines of Particle and Nuclear Physics, a concept actively promulgated by the likes of Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac and many others.
The prospect that the Vacuum can be engineered to transfer energy into a macro system is a tantalising prospect and the subject of active enquiry, for example for space flight (
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1012.5264.pdf)
While there are experiments that have been done that hint at this, it’s a long way off from being fully proven. Early days, small steps, but anything that may help our increasingly desperate plight as a planet is to be welcomed.
Let me summarise all this in some bullet points:
1. CoP is an appropriate measurable quantity for open systems involving any form of energy, even if it isn’t currently used routinely outside of heat pumps.
2. There is an infinite amount of energy freely available.
3. Energy harvesting and open systems are a valid and urgent area of research.
4. Open electrical systems will likely come to the fore in the future, especially in connection with overdue modifications to the Maxwell-Heaviside equations.
5. Many of the descriptions regarding the behaviour of open systems, are completely consistent with our current understanding of the Universe and the Standard Model.
6. Replication of an observed effect is the bed rock of good inductive Science.
7. Nothing here contradicts standard Physics, just extends its application as regular research does.
8. What is seen as ‘fringe’ can, and often does, find its way into the mainstream.
9. It’s easy to ignore or deny facts that might require changing our worldview, however good the evidence. Cognitive dissonance is not comfortable.
Well, there you have it, the long answer! If I still haven’t answered your query then so be it. I’m not going to enter into a debate on any of it - you can explore any areas yourself. Neither will I try and be all things to all people. So long as I follow the evidence and the logic of the path of rational enquiry, I will find MY OWN answers, even if they are worrisome and upsetting to others.
That’s me most certainly done on this issue.