A more efficient electrical generator, or something much more profound?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
f you’ve been following the story of Thane Heins and have been looking for an update to his story, I had one appear this weekend in the Toronto Star. It was a year ago when I first wrote about Ottawa-born Heins, who says he has developed an electrical generator that redirects the energy in “Back EMF” that usually slows down an electrical motor-generator as it accepts load. In other words, Heins claims to have eliminated the magnetic friction and replaced it with magnetic acceleration. He calls this effect “regenerative acceleration,” but those who are skeptical of his claims say that acceleration does not equate to power/torque/work and that Heins has failed to demonstrate there is such a link.
Is it just a more — potentially much more –efficient motor? Or is it, well, more than that? (more…)
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
