Quote:
Originally Posted by Yakaru
Or, you know, conservation of energy.
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Funny how these schemes seem to ignore that. A few years ago a guy I knew was working on a system that used solar collectors to run a turbine to generate electricity. His estimates of the power he was going to get seemed off, so I calculated the most he could possibly get using Carnot efficiency. His huge system was going to get him about 1 kW at best. He got angry at me, and told me that the Carnot efficiency limit didn't apply in his system. Of course the system never got built.
The idea that there are systems to make power cheaply, but a powerful entity like big oil, or the car manufacturers, or the government has suppressed them has been around since the early days of cars, at least. The trouble with those conspiracy theories is that there is huge money to be made if those systems worked, and it would be impossible to sweep the information under the rug and make it go away, especially with all the countries around the world that would benefit.
The closest thing I've seen to a real energy conspiracy was the controversy around large NiMH batteries, back when they were the answer to electric power storage problems for vehicles.