Auroratek demonstration from Bill Alek at TeslaTech conference

[hartiberlin]

This was posted today by Sterling D. Allan from the TeslaTech conference.

Great demo !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXno_7xXSZs


Very well done Sterling and Bill ! Many thanks for having us brought this great presentation !

It is a great device simular to the Babcock and Murray SERPS device , but without the switching...probably more related to the Heins Bitt transformer device.

Interesting would be to see the power usage of the audio amp , when the Auroratek transformer was delivering power back...

Well the Apparent power input was about 14 Watts or better said VA..

The question is , if the audio amp can use the fed back reactive power and thus reduce its needed input power from the grid...

For these kind of reactive circuits you really need the right driver circuits that can reuse the reactive power...
so the real active input power is reduced....

Well , hooking the Auroratek transformer to a motor/generator is probably the easiest application to being able to selfpower such a system.

You have to make sure that the generator can reuse the reactive power and this way the required power to drive it,
will be hugely decreased...
Then the Auroratek transfomer output is enough to drive the motor that drives the generator...

Regards, Stefan.

[TinselKoala]

We were supposed to be seeing a demonstration of a scooter that charged its own batteries. That could be driven around and around and would wind up with more charge on the batteries than it had when it started. Of course.... that claim turned out to be ... er... um.... well, let's just say it was a gross exaggeration.

I really thought that, by now, at least _some_ people would get the message about power computations and power extraction from reactive circuits. I guess not.

[MileHigh]

I watched the whole clip.  The next step would be for someone independent to test the same setup.  The clip is too long and would require too much effort for me to check all the connections and scope settings, etc.

He measures the power into the load resistor with a voltage meter and a separate current meter.  This would be considered poor practice.  There is no need to have two instruments to compound the measurement error.  At the low frequencies being used the resistive load would have no phase shift.  Therefore the best way to measure the power into the load resistor would be with a quality true-RMS multimeter to measure the RMS voltage only.

When he has his transformer running with no load he measures negative real power.  That is highly suspicious because you can invert signals if you wanted and just looking at the setup, you know it has to be dissipating power even though there is no load.  You can take the stance that any measured phase shift that is not 90 or -90 degrees means that real power is being dissipating in the transformer without a load.  The Bill Alek transformer is just acting like a lossy inductor at this point in the clip.  So he measures about 110 degrees of phase shift and claims that power is being returned to the audio amplifier.  But to repeat what I just said, 110 degrees is not 90 degrees, and that is most likely telling you that the idle Bill Alek transformer is dissipating power and not returning reactive power back to the audio amplifier.

Bill relied on the scope to give him the phase shift readout even through it was jumping around +/- 4 degrees.  That's more bad practice.  He should have measured the phase shift on the scope display itself.

When he shorts the output he measures nearly a 90 degree phase shift on the input and makes a big deal out of that.  A shorted output means zero power to the load, so that is not surprising.

All in all, the clip looked pretty convincing for a casual observer.  To make this clip credible, the same measurements would have to be collaborated by an independent third party.  My gut feel is that is not likely to ever happen.  There are enough weaknesses in the clip such that a request for a third-party validation is necessary.

MileHigh

[TinselKoala]

Here is the data sheet for his Honeywell CSLA1CD current sensor.  A pretty clear indication of one of TK's Laws of the Lab: The fancier the equipment the easier it is to misuse.

MICRO SWITCH CSL series linear current
sensors incorporate our 91SS12-2 and
SS94A1 linear output Hall effect transduc-
er (LOHET TM).
The sensing element is as-
sembled in a printed circuit board mount-
able housing. This housing is available in
four configurations (as shown in mount-
ing dimension Figures 1, 1a, 2, and 2a on
page 59). Normal mounting is with 0.375
inch long 4-40 screw and square nut (not
provided) inserted in the housing. The
combination of the sensor, flux collector,
and housing comprises the holder
assembly.
When sensing zero current the output
voltage of the current sensor is approxi-
mately equal to one half of the supply
voltage (Voffset – 0.5 Vcc). CS series lin-
ear current sensors will sense current in
both directions. Current flow in one direc-
tion will cause the output voltage to in-
crease from its offset value. Current flow
in the opposite direction will cause the
output voltage to decrease from its offset
value. The output voltage range is from
25% of the supply voltage to 75% of the
supply voltage (0.25 Vcc
<
Vo
<
0.75
Vcc).
While sensing either AC or DC current,
the linear output voltage will track the
waveform of the sensed current.
The output of these devices can be ad-
justed by varying the supply voltage, var-
ying the gap cut in the flux collector, or
increasing the number of turns of the con-
ductor passing through the center of the
flux collector. Devices on page 56 are
ratiometric.

So, within that black box there must be a tightly regulated voltage supply, for the output voltage of the sensor accurately to reflect the current sensed. Other adjustable parameters must also be tightly controlled.
The fact that the other transformer was measured with the same kit is no guarantee that this current monitoring system is properly calibrated and free of artifact.

[TinselKoala]

I see that in the video, Alek assumes that his load is completely resistive and produces no phase shift and that the rms values read from the meters can simply be directly multiplied to get the real output power. This is not true.

The power resistors and their interconnecting leads have significant inductance, they are not pure resistive loads. I don't know what his inductances are, obviously but there are about a meter of interconnecting wiring and the wirewound power resistors are essentially little coils, inducting away, right there on the bench. 60 microHenry at 1200 Hz has about 0.45 ohms reactance, and at 3200 Hz has a whopping 1.2 ohms reactance. So the correct output power cannot be arrived at simply by reading the meters and multiplying, and the error is small for the control transformer and about 3x larger for the higher frequency Alek device. What does increased load impedance do to the power calculations using Vrms and Irms without the phase angle?

The phase angle relationship in the Alek device is a real Red Herring. Each transformer stage will produce a 90 degree phase shift, less some value determined by the amount of power being dissipated by the actual output. So the expected resultant phase shift, total, is hard for me to predict and this is exactly where the "overunity" can sneak in. You are supposed to  be bamboozled, and chase the phase angle, instead of asking hard questions like "what is the power input to the audio amplifier" and "what happened to the self-charging scooter demonstration?"