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Re: Tesla's Energy Transmission
Tesla proved to the Patent Office that rarified air was a conductor. He also
proved that the ground can be conductor. Therefore the dense air constitutes
an insulator between two conductors which can be the elements of a wave
guide. It is in the shape of a hollow sphere surrounding the earth. A German
in the 50s proved that the wave guide was resonant to frequencies in the ELF
range. This is dicussed in Jackson's text on Electrodynamics which notes that
Tesla was there first.
By the way, Tesla is getting a little more prominence these days. A handsome
bronze bust of Tesla mounted on a heavy granite block can be found at the Yale
School of Engineering, in the MIT engineering library, at Princeton in a
small library in the engineering school, at Harvard in their physics library,
and at CalTech. There will soon be one at the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor. The bust at CalTech is temporarily being stored in the office of the
Chairman of the Physics Department but is promised to be on display by the end
of January in a small library in the "East Bridge" building near Feynman's
prize smallest electric motor, or else in an alcove to the right, just as one
enters the door of that building.
My friend John W. Wagner is responsible for providing these handsome busts to
engineering schools where the students will have an opportunity to learn about
Tesla. He has financed the project with the sale of T-shirts with a nice
picture of Tesla on the front of them at about $20 a pop. I bought six for my
children. Anyone who wants to help John in his campaign to get Tesla some
long overdue credit by buying a T shirt can reach him, I think at
jwwagner-at-concentric-dot-net. If that doesn't work, contact me.
Tesla's idea of wireless energy transmission has been overtaken by other
events. The Carnot cycle devices had great scale economies which could be
exploited only with polyphase AC transmission. The Carnot cycle requires
burning hydrocarbons to change chemical energy to thermal energy, heating a
gas to change thermal energy to kinetic energy, pushing a piston or turbine
blade which powered a rotating shaft to change kinetic energy to to mechanical
energy, and powering an alternator with that rotating shaft to change the
mechanical energy to electrical energy. Each stage had great losses. Now the
fuel cell has become commercial. See: www.gefuelcell-dot-com www.fce-dot-com
www.gemicrogen-dot-com www.plugpower-dot-com. GE will be selling 7/10/15 kw fuel
cells commencing 2001. Beta units will be placed for testing next year. Fuel
Cell Eergy has just sold one of its much larger stacks, rated, I think, at 250
kw, to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The giant dinosuar
single cycle generators that required Tesla's polyphase transmission to serve
10, 50, 100 load centers, will become obsolete over time as the fuel cells are
more efficient in their small scale, than 600 MW to 1400 MW Carnot cycle
generators. A 600 MW single cycle coal fired steam turbine can reach an
efficiency of 33% at the busbar but by the time the energy reaches your meter,
transmmission and distribution losses cuts the efficiency to 30%. PEM
(proton exchange membrane) fuel cells have an efficiency of 40% for the first
two kilowatts of that 7/10/15 kw units, down to 29% at the rated continuous
capacity of 7 kw. A MCFC (molten carbonate fuel cell) has an efficiency of
55% to 60% as a single cycle, and 70% to 75% as a combined cycle system with
the waste heat passed through a gas turbine. If one uses the thermal energy
to heat water, for space heating, and in the high temperature molten carbonate
or solid oxide fuel cells, for air conditioning, one can get efficiencies of
80% to 85%.
I think that the day of the integrated bulk power supply system is about over,
and the day of distributed energy, either on site or at least in the same load
center, is here. The King is dead (Tesla), long live the King (Grove).
Edison tried to win the "War of the Currents", 1890 to 1900 with
externalities, safety. It didn't work. In the coming "War Against the Carnot
Cycle" to coin a phrase, externalities, namely pollution control, may be
decisive as the fuel cell emits almost no nitrous oxides, sulphur dioxide, and
particulate matter. It's carbon dioxide emission is far less per kwh or per
mile traveled in automotive applications, than Carnot cycle generation. With
a small efficient fuel cell powering your needs, what need is there for
wireless energy transmission?
Tesla List wrote:
> Original Poster: cwillis-at-guilford.edu
>
> Hello,
> A couple months back I recall someone posted a link to a site of Bill
> Beatty's- he was thinking the earth could be regarded as a waveguide, but
> not in the sense that is usually meant. There is a type of waveguide for
> super high frequencies that is composed of just a single open conductor,
> which he called a g-line but I have seen other names for them. I have read
> descriptions of such waveguides where either the surface of the conductor
> has grooves cut in it or the conductor is surrounded by an insulating
> substance with an index of refraction (or maybe it was dielectric
> constant?) higher than that of the surrounding medium. Anyway, Beatty was
> hypothesizing that perhaps the earth could be regarded as such a waveguide
> that would function at low frequencies, the atmosphere being the insulator
> with an index of refraction higher than that of space. I thought it was an
> interesting idea and want to try to learn more about this type of
> waveguide. Did anyone else have thoughts on this idea (I can't remember
> his site's URL right off my head)?
> -Carl