This is the way 1.5 billion people light their homes & small businesses in India, China, Asia, and Africa. Twenty years from now these people will be doing good. While fossile fuel dependent and energy wasting cities like Bangkok will be suffering.

This is great! Wish they could get the 400$ tag lowered somehow.

Interesting....

It's a nice fad, but the recharge cycles on the battery severely limit its lifetime.

Perhaps for small shacks or street stands that need a small light to see a small area etc, ok.

But don't expect to be powering your AC or even your iMac anytime soon.

The maintenance on the system is extreme as well. As for my "current" project, forgive the pun, I am

a committee member of a team that is creating a system which extracts power from the redox

reactions in the ground, thereby taking the H+ ions from the bacteria substrates. We use it

via a step up circuit to charge a similar system. It requires virtually no sunlight and charges

lithium batteries at 12 volts. (Clemson University)

TESLA had the best idea, to make electricity wireless. The world will see that technology very soon,

on a big scale. Its already available on small scale as a small device charger.

Solar should be on every house s part of construction and it would be if not for the $ factor.

from Dr Mike:

The maintenance on the system is extreme as well. As for my "current" project, forgive the pun, I am

a committee member of a team that is creating a system which extracts power from the redox

reactions in the ground, thereby taking the H+ ions from the bacteria substrates. We use it

via a step up circuit to charge a similar system. It requires virtually no sunlight and charges

lithium batteries at 12 volts. (Clemson University)

sounds like a great idea hope it evolves and is used !

Appreciate comments.

If people and business had to pay the price for pollution they make (CO2) Solar PV would be cost competitive. On large solar PV module orders 10,000 units and up the price per watt is about $2.00 a Watt. In 5 years we should see 1.00 a Watt PV module price. In the USA, government & Private sector research spending is more than $200 million for solar PV technology.

I think SELCO India has sold 250,000 of the 40 Watt Solar Home Systems. The PV micro-finance market is good and growing. Hopefully, developed countries (USA, EU, & Japan) will help developing countries by supporting micro-finance loans for Solar Home Systems, it's good economics and good for the environment.

I could see solar panels with a geo thermal well which it seems could be adapted to tap some of the bacteria substrates. Bacteria are not the enemy they are made to be. We need to learn to live with the earth with as much efficiency as possible. Miracles could happen!

Bruce...

agreed the price is way to high mostly because of inefefctive storage in batteries. These are getting better and even solar is more effective and price per kw is greatly reduced over 10 years ago. There are lots of alternative energy coming around including using the methane gas produced from landfills. The sooner the fossil fuel hold is broken the safer everyone is with no more gas explosions, oil leaks, and control of it in a few countries hands.

Tesla's wireless energy concept will definitely be viable in the next 5-10. Just as you stated with the portable charging devices now already implementing it. I wonder what happened to the rest of his papers the government redacted when he died. He was working on some crazy stuff like a death ray even so no surprise there. Can you imagine how far we would be had all of his plans gotten to completion?

Exactly Paul, I agree.

I wish someone would start a forum on that.

This entire journal is great.

Tesla’s intent was to condense the energy trapped between the earth and its upper atmosphere and to turn it into an electric current. He pictured the sun as an immense ball of electricity, positively charged with a potential of some 200 billion volts. The earth, on the other hand, is charged with negative electricity. The tremendous electrical force between these two bodies constituted, at least in part, what he called cosmic energy. It varied from night to day and from season to season but it is always present.

The positive particles are stopped at the ionosphere and between it and the negative charges in the ground, a distance of 60 miles, there is a large difference of voltage – something on the order of 360,000 volts. With the gases of the atmosphere acting as an insulator between these two opposite stores of electrical charges, the region between the ground and the edge of space traps a great deal of energy. Despite the large size of the planet, it is electrically like a capacitor which keeps positive and negative charges apart by using a non-conducting material as an insulator.

The earth has a charge of 90,000 coulombs. With a potential of 360,000 volts, the earth constitutes a capacitor of .25 farads (farads = coulombs/volts)(18). If the formula for calculating the energy stored in a capacitor (E = 1/2CV2) is applied to the earth, it turns out that the ambient medium contains 1.6 x 1011 joules or 4.5 megawatt-hours of electrical energy.

I like Tesla Earth Dynamo

Very well said Bruce !!! (Tesla)

This is the topic we should be talking about on the forum.

I believe there is a great business to be made with this.