Lasted edited by Andrew Munsey, updated on June 14, 2016 at 9:32 pm.
Discussion page for Directory:Perepiteia Generator by Potential Difference Inc
Directory:Electromagnetic > Directory:Perepiteia Generator by Potential Difference Inc - Thane Heins of Potential Difference Inc stumbled upon a way of making electric induction motors work, at the very least, more efficiently. At most, he may have found a way to manipulate magnetic fields so that instead of slowing down a generator it speeds it up. (PESWiki Feb. 6, 2008)
I did the math according, and it's in agreement with the input meter -->
First stage: The input meter shows 10.9V, 0.66A, 0.42 PF = 3.0 (3.02) watts, which is in agreement with the 3W reported by the input meter.
Second stage: The input meter shows 10.9V, 0.34A, 0.54 PF = 2.0 (2.00) watts, which is in agreement with the 2W reported by the input meter.
Third stage: The input meter shows 9.9V, 0.14A, 0.70 PF = 1.0 (0.970) watts, which is in agreement with the 1W reported by the input meter.
The output meter shows 13.5V rms across a 100 ohm resistor, which comes to 1.8 watts. That's 180% efficient.
I have no idea if the frequency is within the meters range, but the meters are showing more output than input.
I hope Thane Heins keeps up the good work, regardless of the outcome. There's no shame in trying. Looks like he may be on to something.
On Feb. 6, 2008, Directory:Peter Lindemann, writes:
I have reviewed all seven video links. In all fairness, I would like to say that Thane has built some nice demonstrations and spent a lot of time running experiments. That said, the films show nothing important. First of all, the films do not show enough detailed information to evaluate the demonstrations. Second, no free energy is shown. In fact, the generators are never shown producing any useful outputs. They are either shown producing voltage in "open circuit" mode, or they are shown in "short circuit" mode, where the generated voltage drops below one volt. So, ZERO WATTS are produced in either case.
The changes in mechanical drag are due to changes in inductance and hysteresis. Back in the 1980's, both John Bedini and I independently worked with "variable reluctance" generators. We both saw that these designs work like an inverse to a standard induction generator. That is, they produce maximum drag in "open circuit" mode, and minimum drag in "short circuit" mode. John found that the point of maximum benefit in this situation is to charge a battery, where the impedance of the generator "sees" the battery as a "near short circuit". Under these circumstances, the generator free-wheels and the battery charges quickly.
Unfortunately, Thane is not showing any useful benefits from the generator output. So, there is no "efficiency" to calculate because there is no output!
The real problem with these demonstrations has to do with his motor drive. The motor driving his system is a single phase induction motor. This type of motor has almost zero starting torque, and only produces its rated power at rated speed. So, the rated speed of his motor is probably in the neighborhood of 1725 RPM. Running this motor in the 100 RPM range converts 98% of the input electric power to HEAT. He says he has a capacitor in the input circuit to the motor, but this is never shown in schematic, so we don't know how it is hooked up. If the capacitor is connected in SERIES with the motor winding, it will act as a current limiter, and skew the power factor of the motor towards reactive power. This is fine, IF you want to limit the mechanical power of the motor as well. If the capacitor is connected in PARALLEL with the motor winding, it will act to produce reactive power for the motor locally, and reduce the amount of power it draws from the wall. But again, this would only be significant at rated speed.
The effect he shows when a magnetic field is applied to the motor shaft would be undetectable if he was operating the motor correctly. It is a very weak effect. It is probably caused by the external magnetic field interfering with the induced magnetic field of the rotor. This would not happen if the motor coils were not being severely current limited and the rotor was not "slipping" severely in the rotating magnetic field of the stator.
My GUESS is that the capacitor is in SERIES with the motor winding. This will limit the current to the motor to a specific maximum. At the speeds he is running these motors, the only other mechanism to hold back the input current would be the resistance of the wire in the motor coils. If that is all he had, the motor would quickly over-heat and melt the insulation right off the wire. The fact that the motor is running hot is proved in the seventh film where a large black fan is shown blowing on the motor!
From the data presented, my best estimate of the efficiency of the demonstrations is that over 90% of the energy going into the motor is converted to heat. The changes in drag of the generators is standard behavior for variable reluctance topologies, so accelerations or decelerations of the motor DO NOT represent energy production, just changes in HYSTERESIS DRAG. Since no output energies are ever measured, the input to output efficiency ratio is ZERO.
Thane Heins may have more important discoveries in his lab, but they are not demonstrated in these videos.
I'm really sorry to have to comment negatively on Thane's work. He is exploring a new effect, and he is pretty brave to put out his data. It took John and I years to figure out what these kinds of generators were really doing and why. It is not obvious, and it takes a lot of experimenting and thinking to work it out.
Thane really needs to show the complete schematic of his test apparatus, including the strength and orientation of the magnets on his generator wheel, as well as the specifications on his drive motor. There is a lot of important data missing from the demos.
On Feb. 6, 2008, DMBoss wrote:
: Quote from: blindsangamon on Today at 02:45:23 AM
: It appears that the Perepiteia Motor is nothing more than a hysteresis brake. Placing the steel rods (wound by coils) near the spinning magnets induces alternating magnetic flux within the rods, the resulting magnetic hysteresis causes drag on the rotating disk, and heat losses within the steel rods. Shorting out the coils effectively shields the steel rods from the disk's magnetic field, eliminating the hysteresis drag. This causes the motor to speed up - but not as much as it would if the steel rods were removed completely.
blindsangamon is correct. This is a common phenomenon regards "generators", but one often not commonly known about if you are not working with AC motors and generators all the time. So the professor at MIT may not have this practical engineering savvy to identify the issues at first glance.
An hysteresis brake is one way to describe the apparently anomalous increase in speed when you short the generator coils. What EVERY ferromagnetic core does when exposed to varying magnetic fields is to have it's domains rock or flip direction in accord with the magnetic field changes impinging on them.
This consumes power in the "friction" between domains as they sort of scrape past each other. It results in the material heating up. In addition to this hystersis "loss" is an eddy current effect within bulk steel from the very same time varying magnetic fields, also making heating of the core. These two effects combined are commonly termed "core loss".
Core loss produces a reaction torque in a generator, in that the domain "friction" resists their aligning with the external field - causing more drag torque. Eddy currents make magnetic fields which oppose the fields making the eddy currents too, making more drag torque.
Now "core loss" in any ferromagnetic core material is directly proportional to the induction, B. Put another way the higher the delta flux density, the more core loss you get. (it is also proportional to the frequency, but let's assume a constant freq here, even though it is not at a constant one - it speeds up and slows down, again a neophyte mistake - you must measure things here at common speeds/freqs to make comparisons accurately)
And the induction, B is then what produces the coil voltage via Faraday/Lenz laws. That is voltage is the time derivative of delta flux. So people, when you short a generator coil and it's voltage drops to near zero, you can be certain that the delta B within the coil's core is also near zero!
So if you started with a delta B of say 1,000 gauss at no load on the coils, and your core material produces say 15 watts of core loss per pound of core (solid steel is in this ballpark, which is why we laminate special steels for transformers which takes the core loss down to about 2 watts per pound) then you'd have some serious drag torque experienced by the drive motor with coils open circuit.
Now if you short the coils and drop the delta B down to say 10 gauss, you have REDUCED the core loss by a factor of 1000/10=100 times less core loss when shorted than when open circuited!
This means 100 times less drag torque felt by the drive motor! (therefore the common shaft speeds up when coils are shorted, duhhhh)
This is amateur hour gone mad - both in the videos and mostly in these lists! Which does nothing but hurt the cause of getting O/U to the masses in my view, as it simply reinforces to the powers that be in the scientific community that it is a bunch of flakes and idiots making these claims!
Now I will also say, that heavily loading certain geometry of generator, can produce some gain. I have several examples on the bench which do. But they are proprietary and I don't care to share this with lists. BUT you have to do proper energy/power balances to measure this gain. And you have to endeavor to reduce core losses to a minimum and account for core loss change when you heavily load the coils too.
I have one which gets a gain in excess of the entire core loss value, both eddy and hysteresis - therefore the gain cannot be from this artifact that plagues all coil/core systems. But it is a modest gain, and yes the rotor does want to speed up. But you have to manage this speed, and measure the loaded and unloaded condition at the same shaft speed, because friction and windage change too when speed changes.
Then you have to measure True power at the shaft input via torque sensing and speed, against True output power, including friction, core loss, coil heating and direct electrical output for a complete energy/power balance. In fact there is an IEEE protocol for doing a complete power balance on motors and generators, which includes all these things.
This person did few if none of these things properly and is delusional about the apparent speed increasing meaning it is O/U. There could be a small amount of gain in his sloppy and amateurish system, but it is completely overriden by mundane, conventional effects as "blindsangamon" correctly points out.
Sorry for being so terse with you folks, but it is very annoying to watch so many people do harm to the cause by spouting off without really having a grasp of conventional ElectroMagnetics. Both amateur's like in these videos, and indeed a large percentage of the armchair critics populating these lists! Do your homework before putting foot in mouth!
There's a few rational voices out there, blindsangamon being one, and most of you then deride these voices with nonsense and blind faith!
here's a simplified protocol for measuring a generator's complete power balance:
Pick or know the optimal final speed of the system. Use only this shaft speed for all measurements.
1 Measure all parameters in a generator "no load" condition including:
2 Friction alone, meaning with no magnets or mag fields acting on the cores.
3 Then include the mag fields and measure the input drag power (torque times angular velocity).
The difference between 3 minus 2 is the core loss at no load.
4 Measure the DC resistance of all coils as they would be connected in a loaded condition (i.e. series or parallel).
5 Load the generator at the same speed as the no load tests.
6 measure input power via torque times speed. (Newton-meters times RPM times 0.1047 = shaft power in watts)
7 measure True output electrical power. Not with DMM's. but with appropriate True Power meters or analyzers.
8 measure coil current, and calculate coil's "Joule heating" via I^2R.
9 measure and compare coil voltage compared to no load voltage for a ratio with which to discount core loss.
Then take the loaded input shaft power in watts as INPUT to system.
Against this Input, you add the following:
a electrical output in watts
b friction in watts
c core loss via no load core loss times the voltage drop ratio (so if no load core loss were 37 watts, and no load voltage was 125V and loaded voltage is 83V, then the ratio is 0.664. Multiply 0.664 times no load core loss of 37 watts to equal 24.57 watts output core loss)
d coil heating via I^2R
Add up item a through d for the total system OUTPUT.
Now divide Output by Input for your COP. (Coefficient of Performance)
Note friction, core loss and coil heat are legitimate outputs.... they heat the room! Useful output is an arbitrary distinction based on subjective criteria. If you want shaft power then heat is not useful. If however you want a heater, then shaft power is not useful! So to know in the absolute sense if a thing is over unity or not, you have to account for ALL outputs in a balance sheet.
That's another pet peeve of mine - those who dismiss everything they deem as "not useful"! Now suppose you had a system which routinely produces 200% more heat output in coil heating and core heating while it turns a shaft as in some newfangled motor. The shaft power COP is only 35%, but overall the system is 200% gainful. These persons I refer to would dismiss this as not being useful because the shaft power is under unity!
When in fact a home heating system would require a heat exchange mechanism to get heat from your machine to the air, thus it requires a pump - moving air or water or both. So you could make "use" of both the excess heating and the shaft power from said system!
My point is at these early stages it is imperative that you measure all aspects even if you may "think" they aren't useful. For complete energy balances and because overunity may not come in the form you wish it to!
On Feb. 11, 2008, DMBoss added:
There is one thing I neglected to mention in the above commentary. That is this Heins fellow may also get this apparent anomalous rotor speed up entirely due to the improper use of an AC induction motor.
His related demonstration of putting a strong NIB magnet near the steel shaft of this induction motor, with said motor's front "C" plate removed and having it's speed increase is telling.
That is removing the C plate leaves the AC motor's fields rather open to external influence. And it's steel shaft is magnetically connected to the AC rotor, comprising steel laminations and several heavy turns of short circuited windings.
The AC induction motor [in this case a split phase motor] works by making the stator fields produce a rotating field, which induces currents and then fields in the rotor windings/core. These rotor fields try to couple to the 60Hz stator field rotation, and tries to synchronize with them. An AC motor never completely syncs though, and some rotor "slip" occurs. The more the slip the more current the stator coils draw, and this tries to lessen the slip this it automatically "throttles" the current to meet the drag torque causing the increased slip.
Anyway these things should never use an AC motor as they are inherently unreliable and non linear regards their power signature vs the output torque. But this chap is going wildly out of the normal operating envelope for an AC induction motor on top of that.
That is a 2 pole AC motor tries to run at 3600 rpm, and a 4 pole at 1800 rpm. And he is running at 50-200 rpm. So he has massive slip between rotor field and stator field. (you can allow a split phase motor to run at low speed by simply plugging it into a Variac and turning down the voltage after the rotor's turning, or give it a shove by hand as he does)
Now the force/torque on the rotor is proportional to the B^2 in the air gap. Yes it's alternating, but it is still proportional to the square of the flux density. Adding an external magnetic field from permanent magnets could very well provide a DC offset in this magnetic field - as a path is formed from the motor case to return to the magnet, and from the magnet's other pole to the shaft, through rotor, across air gap to stators, and into the motor case. (C plate is removed so you can make a complete flux path out to the magnet)
This small change in flux levels would make no difference if force was proportional to flux density. But it is proportional to flux density squared. So it is plausible that this small offset, applied to the motor in this very unusual running mode of extreme amounts of slip - has caused an imbalance in the amount of rotor torque.
In a sense this addition of external flux has made the coupling coefficient of the rotor to stator higher due to the DC offset and squared condition. No absolute power gain has occurred, but you have gotten more of the power applied to make rotor boost torque.
His own numbers belie this - his AC motor if the two stacked power meters are to be trusted, is drawing some 250 watts to run at this low speed. While the shaft friction of such a sized device is reasonably estimated to be below 20 watts, probably below 5 watts of shaft power to meet friction etc. So his coupling is below 10%. Adding the magnetic path from external magnets to the AC motor system, could cause say a 15 or 20% coupling to occur. Making the shaft speed up, but this is NOT a gain in energy!
My initial comments are correct - you can engineer a system which produces a shaft speed up when you have massive core loss and you short the generator coils - as this negates much of this core loss - so if the coil heating upon shorting is low, then the rotor can speed up.
Also his messing with AC motor can be responsible for the speed up alone or in combo with this generator core loss artifact. But neither is anything but mundane and neither cause of shaft speed up necessarily indicates a gain over unity!
There's an ultra-simple way to test this thing to see if the device really does cause the motor to run faster. I can't understand why no one has apparently thought of it.
Since the device has no output (the coils are either shorted or open), any power it generates has to be fed back to the motor driving it. So simply remove the device and see if the motor speeds up! If the motor runs faster without the device than it does with the device and the switches closed, then it's safe to conclude that it is a net power drain. But if the motor runs slower, then you might begin to argue that it's doing something useful.
Another comment: somebody above talked about induction motors having a winding, implying just one. This is never true they always have at least two. Three windings are used in 3-phase motors. These are self-starting because the three windings produce a uniform rotating magnetic field that drags the rotor along. Single phase induction motors have two windings, a running winding and a starting winding. The running winding runs the motor at speed, but it provides NO torque when the motor is stopped. In that case the motor stands still while the winding consumes a large amount of power that will either trip a breaker or burn up the winding. If you give the shaft a twist, it will start and run in that direction.
The starting winding provides this initial "twist". It is fed AC through a capacitor that provides a phase shift so that the internal field rotates roughly in the desired direction. This rotating field is much less uniform than the rotating field in a 3-phase motor, so the starting torque is much less and the vibration and noise are greater, but it's sufficient to start the motor.
Capacitor start motors have switches to cut out the starting winding at speed, while capacitor run motors keep the starting winding in the circuit. The advantage of the former is that the starting winding can use smaller wire, while the latter has somewhat greater torque.
Everyone is correct that Heins is using his AC induction motor in a highly improper manner. He even controls the speed with a Variac, which makes me cringe. At low speed his motor must draw a great deal of power and produce a great deal of heat and very little torque. The right way to control the speed of an induction motor is with a variable frequency, variable voltage inverter or cycloconverter. To increase speed you increase the frequency to speed up the rotating magnetic field. The voltage has to be increased along with the frequency to compensate for the increased inductive reactance from the motor windings. All of these variable speed controls that I'm familiar with drive 3-phase motors, usually from a DC supply. Three-phase induction motors are always preferred when possible, and 3-phase inverters are only slightly more complex than single-phase inverters. Ka9q 15:48, 28 Feb 2008 (EST)