Mar 08 2010
Another Energy Scam
A Utah company, Manna of Utah, is planning on building a plant in Odessa MO that will, among other things, build generators for home use. I wrote recently about another home generator company, Bloom Box, cautioning against accepting corporate hype at face value. Bloom Box appears to be a legitimate generator, surrounded by some misleading hype. But the generators promised by Manna of Utah seem to take the company name seriously, promising energy from heaven.
The generator they plan to build was designed and patented by another company, Maglev Energy, Inc. They claim to be able to generate electricity with magnets. Here is their description of their technology:
A running prototype using a new way to control attract – repel forces generated by permanent and electromagnet interactions. Our unique configuration and intellectual property manipulates these forces to apply its product towards useful work. With chip technology, laser measuring devices, and MagLev Energy, Inc. (MEI) developed proprietary algorithms, this prototype produces clean, renewable, and better power conversion ratios than fossil fuels.
Most skeptics should instantly recognize this description as an utter scam – we are in Dennis Lee and Orbo territory here. You simply cannot generate free energy by cleverly interacting magnets. This seems to be the perpetual free-energy deception – whether self-deception or conscious fraud.
Notice the attempt to dazzle with technology terms – wow, they use chip technology and lasers. That space-age (i.e. 1960s) technology.
They further claim that their generators use less fossil fuel than conventional generators – “or no fuel at all.” What seems to be the scam here is that they have a fancy generator they claim is more fuel efficient than a typical generator. This in itself is not an amazing claim. Generators can burn fossil fuel in an engine that uses the energy to rotate magnets inside a coil that generates an electrical current. There are cheap and basic generators and more sophisticated and expensive generators. Building an elaborate generator that shaves off a few percentage points of energy loss is nothing new or amazing.
Free energy scam often use conventional generators as a bait and switch. They produce a fancy looking generator that burns gasoline (or some other conventional fossil fuel) and claim a higher efficiency than what you can buy at Home Depot. But then they claim that the same technology that provides an incremental increase in efficiency can be extrapolated to produce energy with less and less fuel, until you have a device that uses no fuel at all. They can then show investors and politicians their conventional generator to back up their claims – hey, it’s actually making electricity. And of course they have a “prototype” of the free-energy version (which just needs a couple of tweaks).
There is of course the pesky problem of thermodynamics. You cannot make energy from nothing – there is no free lunch. Current generator technology is pushing up against the barrier of efficiency, and any gains at this point are going to be minimal and diminishing – approaching 100% efficiency asymptotically but never reaching it. The first law of thermodynamic says you can never surpass 100% efficiency (sometime called “over unity”), and the second law of thermodynamics says you cannot reach 100% efficiency (there is always something lost to entropy).
Maglev Energy promises consumers:
Reduction or elimination of home power bills – Using conventional fuels, an MEI generator will reduce home electric bills by 50% or more. When coupled with solar or wind, power bills can be completely eliminated.
Sure – burn fossil fuel and make your own electricity and you will reduce your electric bill. Duh. (That is the Bloom Box model.) But is it cost-effective? And where are you getting the fuel from. If you have natural gas being pumped into your house maybe you can decrease your electric bill while you increase your gas bill. Or will you need to bury a huge tank in your yard?
The last line is classic – “coupled with solar or wind” – right – and that doughnut is “part of this nutritious breakfast.” Of course, you could just install wind or solar, which themselves would have to be analyzed for cost-effectiveness.
The public’s attention has been focused recently on the monetary and environmental cost of energy, and “renewable” energies is a hot buzzword. It is no surprise that we are seeing an explosion of companies looking to make money off this fascination. We may be in the midst of an energy scam bubble.
Here’s a tip for the media – get a clue. The information is out there, just exercise some Google skilz before writing that gullible report on the latest scam.
And here’s a tip for politicians and investors – get a clue. Consult with an actual scientist before investing in the latest free-energy con. Politicians in Utah and Odessa are hoping to gain attention for being so environmentally responsible and forward-looking. But instead they will simply be the targets of a round of ridicule from those with a clue.
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15 Responses to “Another Energy Scam”
Good post, Steve.
When it comes to free energy, ‘permanent magnets’ always make me suspicious, because so many of these things play on (or prey on?) general ignorance about what permanent magnets are.
Most permanent magnet free energy scams rely at some point or another on the magnets doing some work but not losing their magnetic properties – this is a thermondynamic no-no. If there is no ‘return’ part of the cycle, permanent magnets eventually become demagnetized, and therein lies the rub. The ‘return’ involves energy input back into the magnets, and the regular rules of thermodynamics apply, meaning that there is inevitably some loss and thus a guarantee of less than 100% efficiency.
Bottom line: ‘Permanent’ magnets are not permanent in the sense of ‘can do infinite work for free.’
But nobody really wants to hear that, do they?
The ‘free energy’ aspect of this company is pretty typical scam fare. The part that really threw me is how they’re not just going to build generators – they’re also going to make food products from soybeans and rice, and make portable emergency rooms to ship around the world. Oh, and they’re buying recipes from housewives.
There
Is
No
Free
Over
Unity
Lunch
(couldn’t think of a TINFOIL acronym
)
This does look like a complete scam. If it were real they would have no difficulty getting private funding, they wouldn’t need to scam politicians for taxpayer money.
Great post, as usual. Just had to say, the entire time I was reading this, the Mahna Mahna song from the Muppets was going through my head.
@ Jerry – I don’t know, I think TINFOUL sounds better.
Steve, didn’t you say on a podcast that even using magnets to provide electricity is only a temporary solution anyways? That eventually you can rid of a magnet’s charge completely, if you’re utilizing its magnetic field and converting it into electricity?
Manna device…, makes dough?!?
Steve, I know you’re big into this thermodynamics thing, but come on—they’ve got magnets, chips, and lasers. You add some proprietary algorithms on top of that, and there’s no telling what might happen. Thermodynamics, as we learned in Physics 101, is only about steam engines anyway. It’s a magic moment for Missouri!
To be fair, the Bloom box is a solid-oxide fuel cell, not a perpetual motion device.
Bloom has focused on trying to reduce the cost of the components by developing cheap proprietary inks that serve as anode & cathode, and a cheaper metal alloy which replaces the usual platinum (expensive!) catalyst.
Traditional ICE-powered generators are limited to the relatively low efficiencies of all heat engines.
Fuel cells, OTOH, can be twice as efficient as an ICE on electrical power production alone.
And if you use the waste heat from the fuel cell for space or water heating, total efficiency (electric power plus usable heat) can be around 80%.
I thought Steve made it pretty apparent that the problem with the bloom box isn’t the product, but the company hyping it into something akin to our energy savior. This company is just out for peoples money.
Wow. odessa is actually the town next to me. I’m wondering if there is some way to maybe stop this, but seeing as how the mayor is swayed by the “christian values” the scammer I’m wondering if there is anything I can do.
It’s nice to know that our neighbors are gonna be short 90 million and 3000 unsuspecting people are about to be taken on a ride of employment/unemployment.
The Kansas City Star has done a follow up story: Generator project for Odessa, Mo., inspires skepticism. It would be nice if the follow up questions had been part of the original article, but at least we got this much.
Does anyone else think that the way that the story is written, and that they contacted Bob Park, gives an impression that skeptics provided some research tips to the writer? Sure feels that way to me.
Quote from the followup article:
“Tony Bamvakais, Odessa’s mayor, also went on the trip to Florida. Told of the experts’ opinions on Tuesday, he said the generator was not a perpetual energy machine. But it was so efficient that it kept on producing power when it was unhooked from an outside power source, he said.
It needs “just enough to get the generator running,” he said.”
My response to that quote:
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of the alarm bells ringing in my head.
You see, it’s not a perpetual motion machine because it needs startup energy before it can run forever. Even if that’s not what the company is actually telling him, that fact that that is the mayor’s understanding tells me the mayor is woefully ignorant about perpetual motion machine claims.
Let’s be clear here: permanent magnets do not “contain energy” any more than the Earth’s mass contains energy.
The electricity in a generator does not come out of the magnets; generators convert one form of energy (usually mechanical) into another form (electrical). Moving a conductive circuit in a magnetic field generates an electric current in the circuit; the energy comes from the mechanical motion, not the magnets.
Using the attractive force of magnets to produce mechanical motion does not really steal magnetic energy from the magnets any more dropping a weight from 100 feet steals gravitational energy from the Earth. The energy lost is potential energy which is essentially energy of position. It takes (mechanical) energy to put an object in or return it to a position to increase or restore its potential energy.
If the energy came from the magnet, it would require massive amounts of energy to produce permanent magnets, which would make the energy not remotely free.
I can only assume that the lasers come with shark attachments because from his description (look out for them deadly and powerful algorithms!!!) sounds like he’s building a fortress of doom.
-When coupled with solar or wind, power bills can be completely eliminated.-
House solar power probably doesn’t cover the average hot water bill in a sunny part of America. This guy knows as much about power generation as I know about clog dancing.