Just watched their Youtube videos...

[solinear]

I'm busy trying to figure out what this is useful for.

From what he's saying, they generated 21k excess Joules over the course of a week.  That's the equivalent of .035 watts.  To give you an idea of what this equates to, 1 kilowatt hour = 3,600,000 joules.  Most American homes use in excess of 1,000 of these per month.  So basically if I built 28,500 of these, I could generate 1 kilowatt (720 kWh/month).  Only another 50% more (or 45,000 total!!) before I can power a home at the low end of power utilization in the US.

It would only take me 170 days to generate a kilowatt hour with their system.  This goes to the core of "How useful is overunity?" or, more appropriately, "When does overunity become useful?".

If I had a choice between the Orbo system generating ten times the excess energy that they are and a PV system ($8/watt), the PV system wins, hands down.  Let me state this a little more clearly.  If the entire orbo system costs $10, their current design would be the equivalent of a $285/watt system.  Making it generate ten times more excess energy would make it the equivalent of a $28.50/watt system.  Wind power systems are closer to $1.50/watt.  To make it competitive with those, it would have to generate 100 times the current excess energy.  Now, it's important to remember, that this is based upon the entire system costing $10, which I'm sure it costs a lot more.  Make it cost $100 and now you have to have it generate 1000 times as much excess energy to be considered 'worth it'.

I do want to qualify that I think that overunity is a worthwhile pursuit.  I do wonder when it becomes a system worth actually implementing.  Orbo is maybe a 'first step', if they're actually generating 21k joules worth of usable EM energy (their video seemed to confuse the subject by talking about thermal energy, kinetic energy and joules, etc...), not to mention that they were sitting in an almost perfect situation (magnetic bearings to reduce resistance to a minimum and the like).  When we have to convert it to a less perfect situation, this turns into a neat little (albeit expensive) toy.

So when do you consider an overunity system to be worthwhile?  $2/watt generated?  $10/watt generated?  $100/watt generated?  As a consideration, at $.10 per kilowatt hour, a ten year payback schedule is $8.76/watt.

[WilbyInebriated]

I'm busy trying to figure out what this is useful for.

From what he's saying, they generated 21k excess Joules over the course of a week.  That's the equivalent of .035 watts.  To give you an idea of what this equates to, 1 kilowatt hour = 3,600,000 joules.  Most American homes use in excess of 1,000 of these per month.  So basically if I built 28,500 of these, I could generate 1 kilowatt (720 kWh/month).  Only another 50% more (or 45,000 total!!) before I can power a home at the low end of power utilization in the US.

It would only take me 170 days to generate a kilowatt hour with their system.  This goes to the core of "How useful is overunity?" or, more appropriately, "When does overunity become useful?".

sounds like 'overunity' could become useful when humanity quits wasting so many kilowatt hours... and starts to understand the difference between needs and wants.

[solinear]

sounds like 'overunity' could become useful when humanity quits wasting so many kilowatt hours... and starts to understand the difference between needs and wants.

Even your most efficient homes are using hundreds of watts.  Just heating a small home will use hundreds of watts.  A human generates more wattage in heat (125 watts) than 3000 orbos would generate (105 watts).

It's easy to make statements like "Until you can power your home with an Orbo, you're using too much energy", but when I can easily generate 1000 times as much energy as an Orbo would with a 10' square PV system (on a cloudy day), why would I buy an Orbo?  If the Orbo takes up .3 cubic feet in space, I'd need a 10x10x10 room just to host 100 watts worth of energy generation... Why buy them when I can generate that same 100 watts on the cloudy day with PV on my roof (taking up none of my living space)?

Until they can make this generate a LOT more energy, it's looking about as useful as a sixth finger.

[PaulLowrance]

From what he's saying, they generated 21k excess Joules over the course of a week.

Nice catch! Now we know how many watts it produces. Once the science & engineering community proves it, then the rest will be history. It probably won't be long after until it's powering homes.

[WilbyInebriated]

Even your most efficient homes are using hundreds of watts.  Just heating a small home will use hundreds of watts.  A human generates more wattage in heat (125 watts) than 3000 orbos would generate (105 watts).

It's easy to make statements like "Until you can power your home with an Orbo, you're using too much energy", but when I can easily generate 1000 times as much energy as an Orbo would with a 10' square PV system (on a cloudy day), why would I buy an Orbo?  If the Orbo takes up .3 cubic feet in space, I'd need a 10x10x10 room just to host 100 watts worth of energy generation... Why buy them when I can generate that same 100 watts on the cloudy day with PV on my roof (taking up none of my living space)?

Until they can make this generate a LOT more energy, it's looking about as useful as a sixth finger.

yes, our most efficient homes are still inefficient... no argument there. and no, you don't need the thermostat set at 75 to survive now do you? it's about your 'standard' of luxury and convenience.

it's easy making statements like "until it can power your home, the orbo is useless" too. i never said wind power, pv, hydro, etc. wasn't better, easier, cheaper, etc... did i? NO. what i said was "sounds like 'overunity' could become useful when humanity quits wasting so many kilowatt hours... and starts to understand the difference between needs and wants." humans don't need kilowatts to survive, we managed just fine for millennia without electricity...