Do Lutec Have the Answer to Peak Oil and the Energy Crisis?
83The Lutec Electricity Amplifier - Is this really alternative energy's Holy Grail?
Just like many people these days, I'm becoming more and more energy conscious. My awareness is increasing every time I fill my petrol tank, or pay my fuel bills. The more things go up in price the more curious I become about alternatives.
Hubpages has provided me with plenty of food for thought. There is an energetic and informative lobby posting hubs on wind turbines, pellet burning stoves, and solarshingles. There's information a-plenty about Peak Oil, and Hubbert's Peak, and the end of civilisation as we know it. Some of the posts are thought-provoking and exciting. Others are just plain scary!
So, armed with some answers, but very many more questions, I sallied forth to search the nether-regions of the Internet to find out more about alternative methods of generating fuel for the power hungry beast we know as civilisation.
It was this very search that led me to the Lutec website: www.lutec.com.au. There I came eyeball to eyeball with my own lamentable lack of scientific education. The technical details of their invention seem plausible enough to me, but what do I know? I never took Physics, and I only scraped Applied Maths on the second attempt.
The invention stares at me from numerous video clips, performing unfathomable technical feats which I know are designed to impress me, and believe me, I really want to be impressed, but sadly, for Lutec, I'm incapable of grasping the detail. I can, however grasp the big picture. This little gismo, if it's for real, could very well turn out to be some sort of Holy Grail. It could reduce the need for fossil fuels in our energy generating industries by between 70 and 80%!
The Lutec Electricity Amplifier
The Patents have been applied for
For ten years now, two Australians, Lu Brits and Victor Christie, have been labouring hard to bring their invention up to a viable stage in development. The Lutec Electricity Amplifier (LEA) claims to amplify energy output by four times the rate of the original input. That sounds unlikely, doesn't it, but these guys have patents either granted or applied for in countries as diverse as Australia and the USA, to China, Indonesia, and Brazil.
I've looked at the various message boards that post around this area of interest. Some posts are very pro, but others are quite abusively negative. The fact remains that there are no LEAs on the shelves of your local DIY store as yet. We are still trying to grasp the implications without having the benefit of a readily available product. Assuming that the technology is real, we could see applications right across Industry.
The technical stuff - How it works
In summary the device operates on the basis of three events:
- A pulsed DC motor
- An AC Generator
- The result of the impact of the second event on the first.
The DC current is supplied from a battery bank, or AC mains supplied to the DC Motor.
There's lots more detail of course, but those who are technically minded can get chapter and verse from the Lutec Website.
Is this minority interest, or do lots of people know?
Once I'd trawled through the web-site, and the various discussion boards, it occurred to me to check Lutec out on Google Trends. I compared it against Hydrogen Energy and Magnetic Energy, and although it's not generating anywhere near the same level of interest as those two, it's picking up at a steady pace, with the main countries being Australia, Germany and Hungary.
Could they be ahead of the game, or are they chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? The truth is that I really don't know, but I want to know, and if there are any technically minded hubbers out there who are up to speed with this stuff then I'd love to hear from you.
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Comments
Hi Plegrove.
Good to hear from you. Thank you for the lead. I will look at it straight after I finish this. I'm with you on the individual energy front. I think that governments and generating companies have focussed for too long on large scale projects for just about everything. Economies of scale may be justified on a production line, but people thrive best within communities, and all our needs should be met on that basis.
BTW have you heard of Lutec before? Since you're on that side of the globe they might have caught your eye. I'm just really curious, because they make such big claims, that I would have thought that people would be snatching their hands off to take it on.
Hi Plegrove
I just had a quick look at some of the stuff on Microturbines. As you say it makes for interesting reading. I'm not wildly technical, as you may have gathered, but it does make sense to re-channel waste heat back into energy production. I read about a scheme in Scandinavia on a much grander scale where the waste heat from a power plant was being reused to heat peoples homes in the local area. I live very close to a power station, and I wish we had a similar scheme! Instead we just watch huge jets of steam disappear into the atmosphere.
Thanks once again for the info about micro-turbines. It's good to know that people are addressing these issues.
Hi Amanda, Thanks for your last comment on my hub about peak oil. I've not heard of Lutec before, but I'll see what I can find out for you. It's got me interested too. Sounds fascinating. With regard to your comment above about people thriving in communities, you should check out a project I recently found out about here at www.hepburnwind.com.au. These guys are in the process of generating the finance to build Australia's first community owned wind farm, with the idea that it will power all the homes in the local area as well as sell excess power to the national energy grid. The money they make will be returned to shareholders and also invested into local renewable energy or energy saving projects. I think it sounds fantastic and I will be lobbying my local council to consider a similar idea here. They only need to have two turbines to power about 2,500 homes, which is a similar number to the area where I live, so it may be possible here too. Imagine if all the small communities around the world started doing this, we wouldn't need the big power stations anymore. Are there any similar things going on where you live?
Hi Helen,
What a fantastic scheme! I've just looked through their site, and it's all so down to earth and practical. How brilliant if lots of similar communities got together and organised their own power generation. Good luck with your lobbying. It sounds as though you have a great chance of getting things going with such a good example already happening there.
Over here, in our part of Britain things are very different because we are so densely populated. But certainly communities in more rural areas such as parts of Wales, Scotland and Northumbria could benefit from similar schemes. There are plenty of wind farms in such places, but as far as I know, they all feed into the national grid. I would absolutely love to see similar schemes springing up here.
Amanda- I hope the oil prices have come down drastically for you too. Here it is less than $2 per gallon now.
Hi CW
Prices have come down a little here, but of course we pay an awful lot more than you do in the States because of government levies. It's amazing how quickly price hikes are passed on, but decreases seem to be passed on only after quite a time lag!
Great positive information here. These are the technologies and social structures of the future. Combined with the World Wide Web to keep us all in contact a true global community is well within reach.
Hi CWB
Good to see you here! As you can see, I have great faith in humanity's ability to innovate, and to overcome minor glitches like the total depletion of the world's supply of fossil fuels! Seriously though, there's an awful lot of stuff happening on the margins that will gradually creep into the main text as people start facing up to things. There's an abundance of natural energy available to us, and we just need to learn how best to access it.
I agree Amanda. The thing that tends to keep me a bit gloomy is the tremendous amount of obstructionism by the powers that be. Time is of the essence and certain very powerful forces seem determined to make sure progress comes as slowly as possible. It's ridiculous really. It's like trying to stop a tsunami or a volcanic eruption by holding out a hand like a traffic cop. What's coming is unstoppable. We need to prepare and make the best of it.
Hi CWB,
It's certainly plain that alternative energy strategies have not progressed as quickly as we need them to. My gut feeling is that a lot of things are in place and ready to roll, but nothing will happen until those benefitting most from the status quo give the go-ahead. If I were in the oil business I would be busily buying up the patents for any technology that I perceived as a threat, then I would take it away and plough my resources into honing it ready for release when the oil runs out. I think an oil baron might call that strategic planning. But of course I could be wrong.
There’s one thing about a lot of forms of renewable energy the big corps can’t get around.
See, I can’t own a private oil well, refinery and oil, coal or gas burning power station to provide myself with electricity. I can however quite easily own my own solar panels or wind turbines. Once I’ve got either or both of those, I don’t need the oil or power companies at all! Think about it. If enough people become completely independent of the oil, coal and hydro power producers a whole lot of big companies are going to be toast. That’s what has them all pissing their pants. They can’t own the sun or the wind. I suppose they could force the politicians of the world to pass laws prohibiting private citizens from owning any technology that generates power and I wouldn’t put it past them. So maybe your scenario isn’t far off the mark.
I forget where it was right off but some big corp. bought up the water rights somewhere in south or central america and then has the government of the country pass a law prohibiting the use of any rain collecting devices by private citizens! There are, in fact, already laws against collecting rain water in several amerikan states!
Are you serious CWB? Laws against collecting rain water? Government should be encouraging rainwater collection, surely? Just as they should be incentivising all alternative energy strategies.
As for the traditional power producers, they must surely know that there's money to be earned from manufacturing the solar panels and the wind turbines, so if profit is the issue, then they just need to move from the old technologies, and into the new. The trouble is that they prefer to wring every last drop out of the status quo. Is this through myopic stupidity, misplaced greed, or monumental laziness? Who knows.
I wrote this hub about Lutec some months ago, and I anticipated more news on their overunity machines by now. I still have no idea whether the whole thing is a scam, or whether it's gone the way of the electric cars that Pam mentioned in her UAW hub. I've heard so many stories about innovations being 'buried' over the years that I get suspicious when businesses like Lutec go quiet.
I'm an Australian, and long time mailing list reciever of Skeptics Australia. Lutec is like a bad smell that simply won't go away. It's a scam. It's basically an Edwin Gray motor (that was invented way back in 1973). One look at their website should make some hairs stand up. The only contact method is email, their "technical data" page is TBC, and their rollout date is "indefinatly on hold". They won the Bent Spoon award (for bad science or faith) in, 2004? and their business is now located, technically, offshore.
I'm all for 'alternative energys', but only when the people making it publish some hard facts and real data.
Go here for more info on Lutec. http://peswiki.com/index.php/Talk:Directory:Lutec
Thanks for posting this. I have read the info in the link, and whilst I'm not sure that it completely answers my questions, it certainly sheds some fresh light on things.
Hi Amanda -
I recently came across this device also - and I have to say, I am pretty horrified at the ease which which such devastatingly bad science can be used to manipulate people with the pretence of developing some fantastic (and, I might point out, impossible) system.
Basically there are a few problems -
1. ALL over-unity machines should, be definition, be able to power themselves. Thiers has NOT been demonstrated to do so.
2. The data supplied (if any) by LUTEC is unverifiable, irreproducable, theoreticaly groundless, and moreover, it is protected by some rather hostile attitudes (it's easy to find various links to skeptical reviews for examples).
The most prominent problem with their calculations is that they fail to make correct measurements - they simply don't appear to have an understanding of the operations of electric motors or how to meter them - leading to an incorrect claim of over unity.
I think if you have any specific questions, then this would be the place to air them!
Thanks for your comment EM. Technically speaking, I have very little understanding of the science behind this project. I understand that in theory at least, an over-unity machine, once fired up, should be able to power itself, so that's clearly an issue. I wrote this article nearly a year ago and I've yet to discover anything more about Lutec. They're certainly mysterious.
Hi Amanda,
It looks like one of those claims to defy the laws of physics; some sort of perpetual motion thing. The experts say it’s impossible - but it would be marvellous to prove them wrong. However, all these ideas about people in their own locale making their own electricity via wind, wave etc, interests me a lot. I don’t want to rely on the big energy companies; not with the kind of winters we have here in Scotland. Nice hub though - well written.
Hi Amillar, I really would love for this to be real, but I suspect that things would be shaping up for Lutec by now if it were 100% Kosher. Every so often I try and find out about Lutec's progress, but I always draw a blank. The're either woefully inept at marketing their invention, or they're completely delusional, or it's a giant scam. I just haven't figured out which it is yet!
Maybe their just short of cash, and that they are engineers who do not want PR company's annoying their science. Doubt the company want small generation units, more likely sell into the large generation market, alongside large scale portable generator such as Aggreko.
Believe the unit works, however, using the unit while drawing a few thousand KVA or KWH? All in development, and that takes a long time just to prove. Might work only for small scale use.
Leesome, you seem to have more technical knowledge than I do. As I said in my last comment, I don't really know where Lutec is at, but I'd love for them to be the real deal.
plegrove says:
15 months ago
Hi Amanda
If you are into alternative energy you should have a look a thing called microturbines.
They look like they could be part of the energy mix of the future but i couldn't find a price on one so i don't know how viable they will be for the average person.
I look for technologies for personal use as i think the future is more about creating energy for your own use instead of massive generating plants. I think huge construction projects are a thing of the past because the price of oil will make them too expensive.