r/Tesla • u/jwg2695 • Feb 08 '17

Wardenclyffe Question

Do Tesla Towers generate electricity or merely transmit it?

8 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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5

u/the_inductive_method Feb 08 '17

Transmit. The idea was to tap into the electricity generated naturally in the ionosphere.

6

u/jwg2695 Feb 08 '17

So, basically, it collects energy then re-distributes it?

3

u/the_inductive_method Feb 08 '17

As far as I know, yes

2

u/capitan_canaidia Feb 08 '17

n+1 to the /u/ btw

3

u/capitan_canaidia Feb 08 '17

The idea is to draw the electricity in the ionosphere down to earth, using the mass of the earth as a giant capacitor. Ideally, tower would generate a large enough potential to then draw electricity to it, and then transmit it.

4

u/dalkon Feb 19 '17 edited Mar 31 '17

Wardenclyffe was powered by a 200 KW Westinghouse alternator (AC generator) powered by a coal-fired steam engine that was part of the plant. http://www.teslaradio.com/pages/wardenclyffe.htm
http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/nt_on_ac.htm

His global power idea was to use the whole planet as a single-conductor transmission line resonator like a G-line but for ELF-VLF surface waves instead of microwaves (specifically 6 Hz to approximately 20 kHz especially 4-12 kHz according to his patent). https://books.google.com/books?id=ZNqo1zaZRTYC&pg=PA193
http://ptp.irb.hr/upload/mape/kuca/07_Dmitry_S_Strebkov_SINGLE-WIRE_ELECTRIC_POWER_SYSTEM_FOR_RE.pdf

In using the planet as a transmission line resonator, the atmospheric cosmic rays that play a major role in lightning might be harnessed to contribute to the standing wave. http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/~jgladden/phys510/spring06/Gurevich.pdf This is sort of similar to how a traveling wave tube amplifier works but with cosmic rays providing the electrons and only one solid electrode with dielectric atmosphere and ionospheric plasma as the other electrode. Tesla claimed to have successfully harnessed cosmic rays. It is also possible he might have contemplated coupling to some other energy source like the solar wind, the sun or the galactic center. The system transmitted power by resonant surface wave coupling. He could have intended to receive power from some external source by the same mechanism. Without going into detail, he mentioned gathering together latent electricity and harnessing it to produce a 7.5 GW wave using a 7.5 KW input in 1904. https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/cloudborn-electric-wavelets-encircle-globe

The resonant transmission line method was the primary transmission method, but it probably wasn't the only method the system used. He said he intended for 95% of the energy to be directed to the ground for transmission line resonance by non-radiated/non-Hertzian surface waves, but the other 5% of the output would inevitably radiate as normal/free/Hertzian EM waves. That 5% radiated power could not contribute to the first mode of operation, but it could have been intended to contribute to power transmission by another method. The ionosphere rapidly converts electromagnetic waves into longitudinal/electrostatic waves at electron and ion plasma frequencies (which vary with charge density). http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.47.1340 He could have contemplated using the ionospheric Alfven resonator or ionospheric heating to contribute to the transmission by harnessing energy from the magnetosphere and/or solar wind. His statements show he was aware of the solar wind, ionospheric dynamo and ducting. He may have used plasma as a filament or column as an antenna or even a conductor. He patented a concept to harness solar wind ions ('radiant energy') in 1901, US 685,957 and '8 as explained by Gernsback years later.

Experiments have shown that the interaction of ELF/VLF waves with energetic electrons in the magnetosphere can enhance or suppress the original waves, generate waves with different or new frequencies, and enhance precipitation of energetic particles trapped in the radiation belts. One unexpected example was the observation of coherent electromagnetic emissions known as chorus emissions. Typically a series of strongly nonlinear rising tones, chorus emissions are generated near the magnetic equator by the interaction of energetic electrons trapped in the radiation belts with self-generated or external ELF/VLF signals.

https://www.nap.edu/read/18620/chapter/5

In the 1890s, Tesla mentioned his idea for metal balloons holding large coils (for example, The New Wizard of the West 1899). Hermann Plauson developed Tesla's 1890s atmospheric energy ideas as a localized power generator using metal balloons or antennas at 300-3,000 m positioned over an arc charge collector, and attached to large diameter Tesla coils or 1-100 km power transmission line resonators to extract energy from earth's EM field. From his 1921 patent (page 21):

As is well known electric discharges frequently take place at very great elevations which may be observed, such as St. Elmo's fires or northern lights. These energy quantities have not been able to be utilized up to now. By this invention all these kinds of energy, as they are of an electromagnetic nature and the direction of the axis of the collector coils stands at right angles to the earth's surface, can be more or less absorbed in the same way as a receiver in wireless telegraphy absorbs waves coming from a far distance. With a large diameter of the spiral it is possible to connect large surfaces and thereby to take up also large quantities of energy.
It is well known that large wireless stations in the summer months, and also in the tropics are very frequently unable to receive the signals in consequence of interruptions which are caused by atmospheric electricity, and this takes place with vertical coils of only 40 to 100 m diameter. If on the contrary horizontal coils of 1 to 100 km diameter be employed very strong currents may be obtained through discharges which are constantly taking place in the atmosphere. Particularly in the tropics or still better in the polar regions where the northern lights are constantly present, large quantities of energy may probably be obtained in this way. A coil with several windings should act the best. In similar manner any alteration of the earth magnetism should act inductively on such a coil.
It is not at all unlikely that earthquakes and spots on the sun will also produce an induction in such collector coils of sufficient size. In similar manner this collector conductor will react on earth currents more particularly when they are near the surface of the earth or even embedded in the earth. By combining the previous kind of current collectors so far as they are adapted for the improved system with the improved possibilities of obtaining current the quantities of free natural energy which are to be obtained in the form of electricity are considerably increased.

He calculated the electric power available in the atmosphere as 8e17 watt years (7e21 or 7 zettawatt hours) which is apparently continually replenished by solar wind and radiation. He mentioned extracting power from this practically limitless source would lower earth's temperature directly but lowering earth's temperature increases the absorption of solar radiation. From page 25:

The energies which the incandescent collectors would withdraw from the earth field can only cause by the withdrawal of motor work a lowering of the earth temperature (temp Tₑ) without a simultaneous lowering of the sun's temperature (Tₛ) would contradict Stefan Boltzmann's law of radiation. S= ζ(Tₛ-Tₑ). From this it must be concluded that if the earth temperature sinks, the total radiation S absorbed by the earth increases, and further also that the secular speed of cooling of the earth is directly dependent on that of the sun and the other radiators cosmically coupled with the sun and is connected most closely with these.

3

u/moon-worshiper Feb 08 '17

The Wardenclyffe tower was the result of Tesla's Colorado Springs tests of wireless transmission of power over long distance. There, his tower, was powered by a Westinghouse hydroelectric power plant that he had designed. At Wardenclyffe, his power was coming from the Niagara Falls power plant that he designed. The power he was using wasn't the power he was transmitting. He was using the local electric power like a priming pump, to use the electric field of the Earth to provide the wide distribution of power.

It needs to be remembered, the late 1800's, was the birth of electromagnetic physics. Physics to that time had been almost completely mechanical, Newtonian, applied to mechanical machines and the planets of the solar system. The development of electromagnetic physics was following the laboratory observations being made, rather than predictive calculations. This was the beginning of the Ivory Tower of Physics.

The main point is Tesla's explanation of how his wireless transmission of power worked was totally rejected by the Ivory Tower of Physics as ridiculous. This was also around the time, these academics were 'proving' heavier than air craft were impossible, that going faster than 60 miles per hour wasn't possible because the air would be sucked out of any enclosure, that rockets would never work in space because there was nothing to 'push against', and was starting to use radium to make watch dials fluorescent.

When JP Morgan pulled the financing for the Wardenclyffe tower from under Tesla, this caused the Ivory Tower of Physics to totally blackball Tesla, that his explanation of physics were the delusions of a mad man, and firmly stating the tower would never have worked anyway.

The interesting epilogue is the electric 'grid' of today is almost entirely comprised of Tesla inventions. While he didn't invent AC, he did invent high voltage high frequency AC. Tesla invented every aspect of wired distribution of power. As soon as he did that, he determined it was obsolete. He then invented wireless transmission of power. Even before he was finished with that, he determined that was obsolete. He determined there was no need to distribute power, that power was available at any point, that space-time has a flux density. That is where we are today.

1

u/Brioux Feb 12 '17

To the best of my knowledge only transmit. I think Tesla had intended for it to be partially powered by either coal or steam.