Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Harvested TV, radio signals power devices

from the sagg home page

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20110608034236data_trunc_sys.shtml

thats really nice n all , but when the energy police catch up to it you can bet that we will all be using cable to
prevent any loss in sales of any cents worth of energy.

but thats a nice try georgia tech!

seems I remember a summer project that you guys wanted to do but the energy police had other plans.

You'll never get anything near the energy from the mains with that. It's not going to make a dent in mains power.

Might make a dent in button cell batteries tho. But you're not paying for energy with those, you're paying for the chemicals and manufacturing.

maybe not , but the difference between a penny in a rich mans pocket or in the pocket of a citizen has started wars and cost governments billions in the past.

and since these devices capture energy from waves , then the only ceiling to the amount of energy they could capture would be the space required to place the printed antenna.

perhaps the antenna could be made into a coating on buildings and houses etc.. see what I mean.

thus - you wont hear anymore about it .

it will be found to break one of the energy police's laws of physics or a suitable law will be made up.

Broadcast power has been a staple of science fiction practically forever. The main problem with it is to get the power density at the power receiver up to a reasonable level. The power density required is going to be in kilowatts per square meter (kW/m^2) range. Of course the power density used by the various communications devices we are familiar with run more in the microwatts per square meter. If we lived in an environment where the power density was up in the kW/m^2 range it would be something like living in a microwave oven. I don't think I want to move into a microwave. The only source that gets into that general range is sunlight. There is just no way to get larger amounts of power out of intentionally transmitted signals.

Bill Gill

And by the way, if you coated the walls and roof of your house with antennae you would lose all reception of the signals you were using inside the house. That would be kind of hard on you if you were depending on your cell phone.

Bill Gill

The picture of the two inkjet printed antennae that the guy is holding in the original URL... do not tally with the words 'harvested TV and radio signals'.
He is holding an enlarged print-outs of two Fractal wide band aerials.
They might be able to power the latest military microchips, but to report (transmit) back to a base, as to what frequencys the 'enemy' was using, would require an extra TX chip hooked into a proper power source.
The original blurb tends to state that radio waves in the air can be used to harvest various electronic devices.
Maybe... but not by using those Fractal aerial, 'sucking' micro-watts from VHF radar, or similar installations.
Yes, the minute RFID devices that Hitachi manufacture, could be powered using Fractal aerials....since they are virtually invisible, being about 0,05mm X 0,005 thick.
Used I believe embedded in paper packaging, and/or high value Banknotes. Then again RFID chips are interrogated using a high frequency power source when taken out of a fixed area. So no point in using RFI chips...so I assume the military do have an as yet unknown use for these Fractal aerials.
The only type of aerials that can take RADIO power out of the air.. is in the medium or longwave wavebands, put out by the normal radio stations.
For instance you can build a Crystal Set, they require NO power whatso ever and this allows you to listen to dozens of radio stations around the world. (Useful during a National Emergency?)
Building a good quality Crystal Set using a full wave circuit, and schottky diodes or similar and specialised csapacitors (prehaps a 1-2 Farad 3volt cap) will give you enough power to run a Crystal Set PLUS an amplifying chip that uses very little power, like a ZL70250 radio chip.
Years ago crystal sets used earphones of about 2000 ohms resistance, but today one can use a pair of Ceramic earphones of at least a million ohms (barium titanate?)
which put out a loud enough sound, that you could attach a horn to.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-fractal-antenna-for-HDTV-DTV-plus-/

It has been a long time but I have seen crystal sets that worked with a horn antenna. The volume wasn't exactly room filling, but it was possible to hear them. I don't know how strong a signal you needed to hear it on the horn, but it was there.

Bill Gill

oh yes , my first encounter with free energy.

I had one of these when I was a child , we had to connect
a wire from it to the ground wire that led down to the street from a telephone pole.

and it had a small earpiece , you could tune in all types of radio stations and listen to them and the unit didnt require any batteries.

I suppose it was using the telephones ground wire as an antenna.

not being bombarded with all those microwave , radio , tv , and whatever signals we dont even know about ... yet.

I think that would be great!

its a good thing that you could mount a antenna outside your house to capture the signals that you want or need to capture isnt it.

But then you would need to couple the antennae from outside the house to more antennae inside the house to rebroadcast the signals. And in the meantime you wouldn't be getting enough power from the antennae on the walls and ceiling to power the broadcast unit in the house.

Bill Gill

could you show that there would not be enough power?

afterall the article states that the signals would power devices and a broadcast unit is a device.

its just that you would have hundreds of thousands of antenas capturing the energy from the signals outside
and you claim that there wouldnt be enough power to power a single broadcasting unit inside , when the devices they are talking about are for the most part broadcasting units such as cell phones...

Remember, we are talking about microwatts per square meter as the signal levels we are talking about harvesting. I didn't read the article, but I am sure that they were not talking about powering transmitters that would have to generate as much as 100 mW of RF power. What one of the other posters mentioned was that they were talking about powering extremely low power device.

Bill Gill

well microwatts range from .000999 Watts to .000001 Watts
so unless you can tell me how many microwatts you are talking about per sq/meter then your comment doesnt carry much weight

Please post a link to where you found that information.

I found it , its on the UGT web site.

http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/device-captures-ambient-energy/




well , it looks as if they expect to get as much as 50 milliwatts.

.050 Watts


a home that has a roof with a surface area of 15 meters x 30 meters is 450 sq meters and .050 watts per sq/meter means you could get apx 22.5 Watts from the roof alone.

and these could be located under your solar pannels. LOL



does your cell phone generate 100 mW of RF power?



thats what they were talking about , but why stop there when the area is available to put the antennas on a home
and power your tv , your dvd , and with a storage system storing wattage 24/7 why not all your appliances as long as there is enough stored wattage.

I have a computer that uses only 50 watts , so in the future we can expect even smaller lighter less energy consumming products
( due to the shipping weights from china )
that could replace the heavy bulky appliances we now use.

plus you can buy refrigerators that use a fraction of what a normal refrigerator uses.

etc..etc..etc...

so you can downgrade it all you want , the fact is that as long as it can produce enough to reduce the energy demand it will fade away.

and they are just printing the entire device on a sheet of plastic , the antenna the circutry and all.

knowing they can do that in America with a printer tells me that we can print our own appliances in America.

and with that said , why couldnt you have a antenna that captures movies and data etc...etc...

this really could turn into something big if it wernt for the greedy rich people who have already spent all their money on chinas economy.

A note on required power levels for an in the house transmitter. My LinkSys wireless router transmits at 18 dBm,(decibels above 1 mW). That is about 63 mW. That is more than I would expect from any kind of RF harvesting device.

Bill Gill

well Bill , I suppose you could find one that uses more electricity if you really tried. LOL

you kind of make it sound like your sitting on top of a electricity utility consumming all of their output.

but would you mind putting a link to your router so we can see just how much energy it consumes?

its really hard to try to discuss things with people who never back up what they say.

oh yes , my first encounter with free energy..................

ok , its not really free , it does require energy to generate the radio waves.

but it was free to me , then !

of course I didnt realize what energy was then either.

Physorg.com has an article today about harvesting energy from radio fields in the air. Follow the link to the story.

I don't see that powering a house very well.

Bill Gill

I just wonder how many of the pads would fit into a 5.5km
circle?
a few billion perhaps?

see , free energy no matter how you see it.



the perimeter of that 5.5 km circle alone is 34,500 meters

the units he is holding look like they are apx
15 cm x 15 cm = 225 cm^2

1 meter has 10,000 sq cm = 44 devices in each sq meter just along the perimeter.

34,500 x 44 = 1,518,000 devices touching the perimeter.

the area of the 5.5 km circle is 95 million sq meters.

95,000,000 x 44 = 21 billion devices

21,000,000,000 devices x .0012 volts = 25,000,000 volts !!!

the article said that the device was able to produce .006 watts at a distance of 3-4 km from the tower.

21,000,000,000 devices x .006 watts = 126,000,000 watts

so it looks like the wattage produced gets higher the closer you get to the tower , I figured that would be the case.

I wonder if the radio station uses that much wattage when broadcasting?

and I would be willing to bet that the radio signals dont stop at the 5.5 km range either !!

so now we know that free energy is available in this type of device at least , that brings us back to the UGT plastic printed devices , put them everywhere you can find room for them and no more power plants at all.

just a lot of printers.

and of course more jobs and growth than any country could handle alone.

AHEM , muhahahaha...

No, it said the device was able to produce .006 microWatts, that's .006 millionths of a watt. Also keep in mind that it is rare for a broadcast station to transmit over 50 kW, so no matter how you work it that is all you could get out of it and then you would be using up all the power for your power receivers, and leaving nothing for the communications receivers that it is aimed at.

Bill Gill

No ! it said 6mW and that equals .006 Watts



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt



Im sorry but your wrong about that , the amount of energy that these devices can generate using the radio waves is not bound by the amount of power that the broadcasting station used to produce the radio waves.




radio broadcast are not aimed at anything specific.

you must be thinking of microwave.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

it would do about the same thing as Tesla's wardenclyffe would have done long ago if he could have found a rich man who would have invested in it.

the rich man that financed wardenclyffe pictured above just couldnt figure out a way to charge people for the use of the energy they would be getting from the air.

I made one small error, it said .06, not .006. However, the direct quote above shows it as .06 Mu Watt. That is the Greek letter Mu, not an m. And Mu represents 1/1,000,000 or one millionth of a Watt.

The rest of course is as they say "not even wrong".

Bill Gill

below is a direct quote from the link you posted.
it is located below the video.



6mW = .006 Watts
the small "m" above means milli and is expressed as the three digits behind the decimal
as in .001 Watts if you go further back then you are in the micro range as in 1uW and its decimal is expressed as .000001 Watts

21,000,000,000 devices x .006 watts = 126,000,000 watts



I suppose you are talking about the maximum amount of power that can be generated by using multiple devices.

does this also mean that if there are 21 billion radios inside the 5.5 km circle only some of them will be capable of recieving the radio signals.

not hardly!

the way it really is Bill is that once the signals leave the transmission station the devices would not affect the transmitter at all , they would not place any type of load on the transmitter.


have you ever heard of a radio station having to increase the amount of power that the transmitter consumes because people were buying more and more radios?

that would really make no sense at all.

and if the transmission requires 50kW and you can get
126 MW by using the devices then that just means that
you can get more energy out than you put in.

21,000,000,000 devices x .006 watts = 126,000,000 watts

they call it free energy or overunity or zero point or whatever they choose to call it.


you really arent actually thinking that the number of devices that are using the radio waves to generate power that you could use would depend on the amount of power that the transmitter uses are you?

because if you are then as they also say "thats just wrong"


now getting back to what I said earlier these devices will just fade away or they will be priced so high that using them to achieve overunity or free energy would be out of the question.

as soon as the energy police find out about it your link may not even work any longer or it will be edited to withhold information that would show the possibility of free energy.

unless they can figure out a way to charge you 100 times the price that it cost them for the energy.

thats just the way the world is.
it was that way when Tesla first invented such a invention and it will be that way for years to come.

as long as there is a energy product to sell.

Paul I don't know why I keep trying to explain things to you, I know you don't believe in TANSTAAFL*, but I keep hoping. So I give up on this effort with the following statement.

You cannot get enough power out of various broadcast RF signals to power anything but very low power specialized devices.

*TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. An acronym used by Robert A Heinlein in his science fiction stories. Out of science fiction, but very true

Bill Gill

and you cant get much power out of a watch battery either.

but if you connect enough of them together you could power a entire city , nation , or the entire world.

I dont know what your reference to TANSTAAFL* is because I dont read sci fi.

In my world there are no boundaries , no limits , no stop signs , Im free to think whatever I want.

and I dont envy anyone who has been brainwashed into thinking otherwise.

also , if there is no such thing as a free lunch then why are billions being wasted on fusion reactors.

unless you understand that everyone could not afford to build there own fusion reactor , LOL.

I give up Bill hardheaded people are just hardheaded you present them with the data and facts that show how things are and if they dont think its possible they just continue to spam out the teachings that have been brainwashed into their hardheads.

the brainwashing forms a kind of force field around their brain that will not allow anything to penetrate there brain that goes against what they have been taught , or what they cannot comprehend.

sorry Bill but thats just the way it is.

I can get 1000W of free power when I plug my vacuum cleaner in. The energy just appears in the vacuum cleaner. If we put 1 billion vacuum cleaners in a city then we're getting 1TW of power! More than the power plants that run the city use!

No, it's not free energy. No you cannot get more power than radio transmitters use. No you can't do away with power plants.

A bit like how you designed a reactionless drive that was practical and affordable for anybody to make at home. But you didn't bother to make it? Something put a stop sign in your head and said "Paul, deep down you know this can't work, you'll feel like a fool and waste your money. Better to just talk about it instead so you can keep believing what you enjoy. Don't let reality make life boring."

Fusion energy is not free energy. Do you know why?

not that it matters , or that you would be honest about it
but why?

on fission the following is known.



does that mean that if opperated in breeder mode the fuel is created as it opperates?

and in breeder mode you are essentially getting something for nothing and eating your lunch for free , and then to get up from the dinner table you just reach down and pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

but I guess it wouldnt be free energy if it is owned by a large corporation that charges for the free energy thereby making the energy not free.

LOL

but even though fussion has not yet been achieved for any sustained period of time , please tell me why fusion would not be free energy.

"essentially" means for somebody's expectation of practical uses. We can also say coal is an "essentially limitless source of free energy" We just dig it up and get energy from it. There's so much buried in the Earth that it'll practically never run out.

Nuclear reactions that produce more energy than they consume cannot leave their fuel in the same state it was in before they started. It always ends up with less energy available for further reactions. It'll always run out eventually.

Stop confusing "free energy" with "no cost energy". That's not what the term means, and I'm sure you know it.

OH , LOL , no cost energy is what I call free energy , just because science wants to find a way to confuse the public with its definition of free energy does not mean that the free energy in a nuclear reaction isnt free energy.

when I say free energy I mean no cost energy as in free.

lets get this point clear however , the actual energy is free but the cost of making the material and then storing the used material far outweighs the payment that the energy companies get paid for the energy.

this causes subsidies to be paid by governments which are simply more public debt.

the radio station would not cost a fraction of the cost of a nuclear power station , it would be buying the 21 billion plastic devices that could be placed on rooftops
and sides of buildings and then connecting them all together that would be extremely costly.

but this does cause free energy to be possible and is easily understandable , you really can eat your lunch for free.



is coal limitless? NO

in fact if we tried to burn coal from now on out till it runs out we would not last a portion of the time it would take to burn it all up.

but using nuclear power we could live side by side until we ran out of fissionable material.

we could even use a electromagnet rail gun to shoot the used nuclear material into our sun.

and that rail gun could be solar powered.

another free energy device is the mintos wheel that utilizes the difference of temperatures to move a gas from one point to another to produce potential energy.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=36a_1188612843

this could be built as a small working machine that would produce energy , and once you build it the energy is free as long as you have a differential of temperatures to move the gas.

a hydrogen engine that is sealed that uses the same volume of water to produce energy would be a example of a thermodynamic free energy machine.

however a radio station that produces radio waves could only be explained as the point of origin of the waves it generates , and the energy that the radio station itself consumes could in no way restrict the amount of energy that can be taken from the radio waves it produces.

So it's not free. In that sense all energy is free. Energy from oil is free, if you don't count the cost of the oil and the machines that use it.



You still didn't notice the word "essentially".



Where did you get that idea? It's wrong.

yes but the cost of the oil or coal can be many times the cost of the oil burning boiler or coal burning boiler that burns up the fuel that once burned is gone.

so once you have purchased $1.00 of oil or coal and burned it you have nothing left over.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

However a breeder reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates more fissile material in fuel than it consumes.

the fuel is free , the energy is also free.

so once you purchase $1.00 of fissionable material and burn it , you still have more fuel than you started with.

everything that goes into the construction of the reactor is the construction cost , and should not be confused with energy efficiency.



and the moon is made of cheese.

and cows jump over the moon made of cheese.

where did you get the idea that its wrong?

or just explain why the amount of energy these
devices could generate would be limited to
the amount of energy that the radio stations consume.

I really can't understand how your mind works. How do you reconcile these two facts?

1. Breeder reactors exist and are widely understood and accepted.
2. There are no widely accepted violations of the law of conservation of energy.

Are you saying those nuclear scientists build free-energy machines then turn around and say "yes, here it is, but it's not possible, but it works, but it's not possible."?

1st law

Why do you expect to use a radio station at all? Why not just put a single paper antenna in the middle of the desert and generate 1MW? What's stopping you?

Why use an antenna at all? Just get two ends of a piece of wire and connect them to your TV to power it for free. The energy doesn't have to come from anywhere. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Have you tried that? Ever wondered why it didn't work? No matter how much you willed it to work, no power came out of the wire. Why not? Everything's possible you say.











[/quote]

thats not much of an explanation.

explain why the devices cant output more than the radio station consumes , but dont quote any laws or point to any laws.

if you can.

No, that's impossible. Without using laws, you can't make claims about things that don't yet exist. Sure the laws might be wrong, but in this case if they were wrong it would have been discovered during the previous 100 years of radio experiments.

You say they can. You show why they can.

That doesn't answer my question. How do you reconcile those apparently contradictory beliefs?

Or do you think breeder reactors are some kind of secret that only you know about? How did they get on Wikipedia?

I already have.
21 billion x .006 watts = 126 Mega Watts !

and I could safely say that the above is a low figure because radio stations can broadcast much further than 5.5 km.

even if the signal strength gets lower as the distance from the transmitter increases the amount of devices would also greatly increase as the distance increases.

although science is not supposed to be based on beliefs
many times I have encountered people who only have the capability of squirting out the laws of their belief system instead of discussing reasons why they think that something will not work based on logic.
instead they rely soley on the common scape goat belief system that they squirt out when they are faced with something they cannot comprehend.

these laws that you use in your belief system have never been accepted as being 100% correct so they do not give someone a proper means of disproving anything that is new.

It isnt my burden to prove to you that what I say is right , it is now your burden to prove that what I say is wrong , and squirting out laws will not accomplish that task.

WRONG!!!

When somebody makes a statement that is contrary to accepted beliefs (in this case formally stated physical laws) they are the ones who are required to prove their statement. If somebody came up to you and said Abraham Lincoln was a slaveholder it would not be your job to show he was wrong, it would be his job to show that he was right.

Bill Gill

Bill

I simply placed a 225 sq cm device in every 225 sq cm of the 5.5 km circle , then I multiplied that number by the amount of wattage that 1 device can generate.

21 billion x .006 Watts = 126 Mega Watts

So since I have quantified the wattage it is now his turn to show where I am wrong.

I think that kallog should address this and not just squirt out laws since I have already done the math.


If you dont agree then thats your problem.


If somebody came up to me and said they have a 100 Watt light bulb that they would like to use but they only have access to a bunch of D cell batteries and none of them have an output of 100 Watts.

I would ask if they have tried to connect the batteries together to light the 100 Watt bulb.

Assumption: the "one case" where 6mW was measured as so common you can fit 21 billion devices in similar places.

Assumption: Installing one device won't reduce the power available to neighboring devices.


Remember, no laws allowed! That includes made-up laws (assumptions). So no, you haven't shown anything that satisfies your own requirement.

Nobody can escape that. If you say

21 billion devices * 0.006W = 126MW

then you're using the law of conservation of energy! Just because you didn't state in words doesn't mean you're not using it. If the 1st law was wrong, you could have said:

2 devices * 0.006W * mystery factor of 10 billion = 120MW

You tell how you did it. But you don't explain how you bypassed one of the most tested of the natural laws so:

PROVE IT!!!!

I don't have to accept anything without proof, and I don't have to disprove it. That is your job since you made the ridiculous statement.

Bill Gill

It is a sort of new concept, so the reason I used the 6mW was because there should be advances that will allow for more energy production per device , of course I did assume that all devices would get a max of 6mW.
assumming that the closer to the radio station the stronger the signals would be and the further from the station the weaker the signals would be.

I was just using the 6mW as an average.

of course you would not get the same output from all 21 billion devices , some closer should be stronger and the further away ones should be weaker.




it may be that the devices actually absorb the radio signals energy as they enter the devices , in this case the signals would become weaker further out after there energy has been absorbed by the devices closer in.

otherwise if the energy is not absorbed but merely excites electrons or whatever makes it tick causing electricity to flow in a circut as it passes the device then there would be no reason for doubting that more energy could be taken by using multiple devices than the energy used in the transmission.




I never use laws to figure something out anyway , I never have figured out how to put them in my calculator or to apply them in any situation in a fashion that would decide if something would or would not happen.




yes , I have.

Im not using any law , !!!

Im just using the data provided in the articles and my calculator to explore the possibilities of the devices.

if there was no data in the articles and only laws then I would have no avenues open for exploration.

the laws are only a set of guideline's

and the most important thing is that you are most likely misusing the laws.

not that the laws are important anymore since they have been manipulated in a fashion that supports the energy industries.




I don't have to accept anything without proof either.
if you think Im wrong then its your responsibility to prove that im wrong by explaining why im wrong.

and squirting out the tools that were used to brainwash your brain into thinking the way you do will not ever prove anything , to me , or anyone else.

the only thing that law squirting will accomplish is nothing.

Since you are convinced it will work all you have to do is build a simpler system that will prove the concept. We will wait while you do that.

I remember you never have even tried to build one of the systems you have developed that was supposed to provide large amounts of power.

Bill Gill

You're lieing. You used 6mW because it gives a more impressive result. Use 0.06uW or whatever the other value was. The article made it clear that 6mW was anomalous and depended on the (one) location. You can't assume there will be any advances - that's just making things up.



Of course! That's what any antenna does!



Anyway all this is irrelevant. I assume there will be future advances on batteries that make them never run out. We won't need power grids because a single battery will last forever. If you doubt me, you'd better prove it. Don't be brainwashed by energy scavenging and other small-time ideas that hide the truth of unlimited free energy.

So what you are saying is that there would be a limited number of these devices that could be used , otherwise
the entire amount of power in the form of radio waves that the transmitting radio station produces would be absorbed by the devices if enough are used and that would reduce or even eliminate the effectiveness of the radio broadcast itself rendering it useless as long as these devices are being used in a large quantity.

I can see lawsuits that will demand that the manufacturers of these devices supply there own source of energy to be supplied to the devices.

in effect eliminating there usefullness.

somebody has got to pay for the electricity.



maybe this would work for the energy that the devices would need its not a battery but if this stuff works then you could certainly charge your battery with a effectively limitless power supply , LOL.
then I would like to add your above spill would be comming true.

http://www.freesolarpro.com/weblog/125



and



80% , could this reduce the effects of global warming?
if you were to capture the energy and beam in out into space.

the above would be more along the lines of no cost or free energy because it uses the heat produced by our sun.
but it can use any heat source , maybe we could even wear them to power our devices because we emit heat.

something tells me that some scientist dont exactly have the belief system that most scientist have been afflicted with.

Yes. Buildings and hills already do this quite significantly anyway. They're effectively RF scavengers that dissipate their captured energy as heat.

Sure we could put the antennas on the surfaces of these things so the effect is no worse that it was anyway. But the space available for that it limited and it's so widely distributed that wiring them all up would be quite costly. To be more effective you'd probably have to build walls of them - blocking some of the radio signal from reaching receivers beyond the wall.




Solar power isn't free energy.

We can already get electricity from the sun. This is just and improvement on that. It's still not free energy. Not no cost either. Somebody has to produce the nantennas just like somebody has to produce solar panels today.

We can also generate electricity from the wind. We don't have to pay for the wind, it's just free! But that's not what free energy means either.

I dont recall ever getting a bill from the sun for using its energy , and that means that when I use it to heat my home and my water, its free , free energy.

the construction cost of the systems I use can not be counted when counting energy cost , as that cost will dimminish every hour I use them , eventually leaving me with a essentially limitless source of free energy.

my water heating system cost about $200.00 to build.
my water heater USED to use 2 4500 watt heating elements.

on the side of my water heater there is a label that says this water heater uses apx $403.00 worth of electricity per year.

but I removed the wires leading to the elements.

so I have saved in the last year $403.00 , thus my construction cost have been repaid and I now get free energy in the form of hot water.

105 F hot water

BTW , it took awhile to figure out the volumes and the cycling to keep the temperature of the water from escalating to above 190 F which is the temperature inside the collector on a sunny day and maintaining a moderate water temperature of 105 F.

my water heater will store hot water for 3 days.



yes we can !!!

however the greed has made that electricity out of reach for most people , I suppose I could use solar pannels to do the same job but the cost difference and the 20 year lifetime restrictions caused me to use a more affordable and longer lasting solar collector instead.

9000 Watts of the cheapest solar pannels would cost apx $150.00 per 40 Watts and probably another $50.00 per pannel installed
and would consume my entire rooftop.


9000 Watts/ 40 Watts = 225 pannels

225 x 200 = $45,000.00

$45,000.00 to do the same job heating my water as the $200.00 collector.

I choose the $200.00 version in lew of wasting the extra
$44,800.00


so yes its free energy , free in more ways than one.

Good on you. I have something like that too. But I still need an electric element for cloudy days.

However it's not what's normally meant by "free energy". I don't know why you're trying to make an argument out of this.

I used to live in a house with money-free energy, we paid nothing for electricity because the landlord was stealing it from the power company. But that's not what "free energy" usually means. Please don't redefine the term or it'll just cause confusion.

The sun consumes fuel. That's why it doesn't count as free energy. It won't last forever because it's always pouring away energy from "burnt" fuel.

but I dont have to pay for the fuel the sun burns.

so , as long as I live and as long as the sun shines my
water heater system and my home heat will be using the
free energy from the sun.

until the republicans can figure out a way to charge us for the suns energy that is.

maybe they will build a sphere that surrounds the entire earth that blocks sunlight and you can rent a window that will allow sunlight through that will shine on your property.





No worries , your not beyond the black stump.

what you need is a water heater that has really thick insulation.

calculate the volume of hot water you use in a single day.

then if you use 50 gallons per day then you would need 1
of the 50 gallon waterheaters per day of cloudy days.

you can get the water heaters really cheap if they dont work
(the electric part) just go to your local salvage yard.

if they are not the thick insulation type just build a box
and allow 5-6 inches space between the box and the water heater.

then buy the cans of foam to fill in the space.

voila , you no longer need to run your element.

Just stop using word games. Stop using the term "free energy" because it will always result in miscommunication.




No, what I need is an electronic control to activate the element at appropriate times so I don't have to pay attention to it. You might have forgotten that electricity is so cheap it's practically free. $400 per year? Sure that might be important if your income was $1000/year, but it's not.

Your water heating isn't free. You say you spent $200 dollars on your water heating system. So no matter how long you use it that will not drop to $0.00. There is that cost for hot water, small but still there. Then there is the question of how much work you put into it. If you had put that work into a job that paid you would have had more money, so that has to be figured into the cost of your hot water. And how about maintenance? There has never been a system built that didn't have long term maintenance costs. So they have to be factored in. I believe that you're in Florida, USA. So you may not have to worry about freezing weather, but most of the US isn't that lucky, so other people would have to add some costs for freeze proofing. In fact I used to live in Florida and had my water freeze up, so you aren't completely free from that concern. So no matter what you claim your hot water isn't free. There is a cost to it. In fact TANSTAAFL.

Bill Gill

1/2 year after it was built it paid for itself.

it did originaly cost $200.00 but after the first year it has paid me $200.00 and paid for itself.

do you somehow think that it should just magically appear and start saving me $400.00 a year?

BTW , construction cost is not considered when calculating energy efficiencies.

and when I say free energy Im not talking about construction cost , it is the cost of the energy that I am talking about.

do you include the price of your car or truck or the work that the manufacturers put into building it when you determine the energy that it delivers carrying you around.

I didnt include the cost of my water heater or the cost to the manufacturers when they built the water heater , I only included the $403.00 per year in electrical bill that I no longer pay.

your still going to use the same amount of electricity to heat your water to a given temperature even using a timer switch , but heres one that would do the job.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?h...ved=0CDUQ8wIwAQ

these things are only good if you are away from your home a day or so all the time.

for instance you could switch your water heater off on friday and then back on on monday using the above timer.

but as I said what you really need is good thick insulation
so that your water heater does not loose the heat that you are paying for when your not using it.



It may be cheap , but I get a kick out of lowering my monthly bills , and lowering the amount of pollution that I would normaly be causing.

and if things keep going the way they have been and another republican gets in as the president we might all have to save every penney we can as the republicans seem to want us to lower our expectations concerning wages and living conditions in general.

so in a way Im also expressing my opinion of republicans.

and Im showing just how much I think about their constituents
by lowering my energy bill.

As I said, I don't care about electricity use. I only use the solar water heater because it was already installed when I moved in.

A timer wont work for me. My system has too many manual controls.


You can't insulate the collector. That's probably by far the biggest heat loss apart from turning on the tap. Well OK maybe you can, you could have some glass/etc covering with a vacuum gap under it. Then the sunlight can get through but heat can't convect out. It would even block radiated heat like a greenhouse. Now I think about it, I've seen solar water heaters that seem to have glass coverings, maybe it's common. Mine is just metal pipes.

You only need to power off the circulation pump that circulates the fluid from the collector to the water heater.

you probably have a temperature sensor inside your collector that powers on your circulation pump after the temperature has reached a certain temperature and one inside the water heater that powers the circulation pump off after the water in the water heater has reached a certain temperature.

but it might be best if you dont mess with such technical stuff , you would need to power off all the sensors so that
they dont just sit there trying to turn the pump on or off all day if you have the pump power disconnected.

but still if the insulation on your water heater is not thick
enough it will lose heat faster than a thicker insulation would.

and when your water heater looses heat a sensor in the water heater allows the sensor in your collector to power on the circulation pump to heat the water back up again if the temperature in the collector has reached a high enough temperature.

it may all be controlled by a circut board.

It has no pump. The only sensor is a temperature and level sensor connected to a readout inside the house. It doesn't control anything. The water has to be regularly filled manually with a valve. If you operate the electric heater when the water level is too low it burns out. Basically it's a bit of work to use but automating it would be a much bigger task than is worth it. Especially since it's owned by the landlord.

then you shouldnt concern yourself with fixing it?

or try one of these float valves.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?h...ved=0CGUQ8wIwAA

and connect it to one of these electric valves.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?h...ved=0CF8Q8wIwAQ

then you wont be buying the heater elements everytime you forget to fill the tank.

BTW , you can build a tank outside the water heater tank and use the float valve inside it.

the water levels should be the same in each tank if you position the external tank correctly.

just remember to flow water from the bottom of the external tank to the bottom of your water heater so that the water levels can equalize.

and if you have a pressurized water heater tank then make sure you use a pressure external tank.

just use an old salvage yard electric water heater , remove the heating element and build a fitting that allows you to insert the float into the hole for the heating element.


this way you wont be invading your landlords property only adding a appliance.

I have never seen a water heater that required manual filling
so Im not sure exactly what you have , but maybe the above will give you an idea or two on how to repair this neglect.

could it be that when you moved into the property the landlord had turned off the water valve leading to the water heater because the property was vacant?

have you tried to just leave the water valve on?

you may have a pressure vessel for a water heater tank so if you leave the water valve on the water pressure will equalize and the water will stop entering the tank until you use the hot water again.

is this the type you have?



if so maybe you can just disconnect it and put several of these together for much better hot water at a much better price than all of the above.



Caution: the above solar hot water heater ( garden hose ) delivers extremely hot water.