http://www.freelectricity.com/
I know it looks to good to be true. Just how do they make their money? They can install 1.6 million units for free? Debunk this for me please.
They ask you to send $14.95 … they say they send you a video tape with interesting stuff on it. What part don’t you understand? They are selling you a video tape… if you are lucky.
According to their FAQ, their unit will generate about 30MW/H/year and they will give you an allotment of 26MW/H to use for yourself. They will presumably profit by selling the surplus to the power grid.
From the FAQ’s
Also…
And…
So, according to them they’ve already made one million dollars in registration fees and aren’t obligated to do anything until 1.6 million households have registered (if they ever reach that point). Plus, they strongly encourage people to buy their $10.00 video. So, you send them $15.00 and they send you a video. Convince enough people to do this, and you start to make some real money.
When you read the FAQ’s you’ll see that after they get the 8 million in registration fees, they can just say that the fossil fuel entries are opposing this so much that they won’t be able to make any money, and the company can walk away without having installed one generator.
My first question was ‘answered’ in their FAQ:
I believe the scientific reply to this hooey would be “There is no free lunch”.
Shiva (Free and very unique)
I just finished reading a book (Voodoo Science : The Road from Foolishness to Fraud by Robert L. Park) that took a ten-page look at Dennis Lee and his perpetual motion machine*. The apparatus he’s selling and you’re referring to is supposedly something called a “Fisher engine.” The Fisher engine requires liquid carbon dioxide (compressed) to run. Ostensibly, the CO[sub]2[/sub] is liquid in order to cool the engine. In reality, the Fisher simply runs on energy stored in the compressed gas. If it’s not hooked up to a very high load, it can run an impressively long time on the stored energy.
So the Fisher engine looks impressive for a short demonstration, but it’s still a little lacking in the free-energy department. Perhaps that’s why “ITEC plans to begin installation of the ‘Hummingbird/Sundance’ generator once 1.6 million households across America have been registered.” and not a moment sooner. How long, do you think, it’ll take them to register 1.6 million households?
*Great name for a punk band!
Hey! My 500th post! And I used it to explain a perpetual motion machine! How appropriate; I’m tickled. Someone slap me onna back for that.
Also, according to their FAQ, they have invented a perpetual motion machine, although they state that it is not a perpetual motion machine. They do state that it runs on an perpetually renewable energy source (gravity), but will, nevertheless, run out of energy in about 100 years (translation: after you are dead). That machine will generate the electricity that they will then give you for free.
Why? They don’t say. The FAQ doesn’t even attempt a pseudoscientific explanation for installing the “generators” on individual homes rather than at a generating station. I was disappointed. I expected something about magnetic interference or the strain on the gravitational field if too many “generators” were operated close together.
Awww, somebody beat me to it. Oh well.
Dennis Lee gets his money from suckers who send it to him. He has been in legal trouble before and, at this rate, may soon be again. Some pages debunking him and his “free” electricity:
http://www.phact.org/e/dennis.html
http://www.skepticnews.com/articles/01/03/10/043220.shtml
Some pages offering “free” electricity and similar goodies. http://www.electricity4free.com/
http://www.ucsofa.com/Free%20Electricity.htm
http://teslaelectric.com/