Luke,

 

It’s a bit more difficult than just normal capacitor switching, else all those sharp young graduates our universities produce every year would have done it long ago.

 

Any separation of opposite charges is already known and proven in physics to exhibit broken symmetry in the violent virtual state energy flux of the vacuum. Among other things, that’s why Lee and Yang got the Nobel Prize in 1957.

 

So what does “broken symmetry of opposite charges” – where the symmetry is broken in the vacuum’s flux exchange with the charges – really mean?

 

It means that, as the virtual photons from the vacuum are absorbed by that dipole, not all the absorbed energy is radiated back in virtual form. Ergo, some of it gets integrated coherently (we specified the exact mechanism, previously). And that part gets re-emitted by the dipole as real, observable photons pouring out at light speed in all directions. This steady outpouring of real EM energy establishes and continuously replenishes the associated “static” EM fields and potentials associated with that source dipole.

 

So “static” is not really static. Instead, the “static” field is a steady state moving field, moving at light speed. It’s just that it is also a continuous “free” emission from any dipolarity. Best to use Van Flandern’s analysis of a waterfall. A frozen waterfall, with no moving internal parts, would be analogous to the way electrical engineering presently (and erroneously)  regards static fields. A nonfrozen waterfall (consider a “perfect” one) would still look like the same waterfall, but it would also be comprised of internal parts in motion, with each part moving on but being always replaced by one coming along behind.

 

So the “static” fields are actually “steady state emission” fields, radiating into space. Easily proved experimentally also.

 

Well, now that should be interesting. It means that every dipolarity (which a priori has a potential difference between its charges) is an absolutely free source of EM energy, taken directly from the active vacuum. The basis for that has been in physics for nearly a half century, but in that time it hasn’t migrated across the university campus from the physics department to the EE department, and got them to change their horribly flawed and decrepit EE model. That model still assumes a material ether, more than a century after it was falsified in 1887.

 

Now consider an “isolated” charge. In physics we know that the charge is quite different from how electrical engineers view it. First, a charge polarizes its vacuum medium. So – somewhat incredibly – the “bare” charge in the middle is infinite, and clustered around it are bubbling virtual charges of opposite sign, also infinite in total magnitude at any time. But the external observer or instrument, looking through that surrounding vacuum polarization screen, only sees a finite difference – and that finite difference is the classical textbook value of the charge for a given charged particle, etc.

 

So when we have a single charge – even just a single electron – we still have two sets of infinite charge and infinite energy. We also have a special kind of dipolarity, and the broken symmetry of that dipolarity is continually absorbing disordered incoherent virtual photon energy from the vacuum, integrating and reordering it, and re-emitting it as real EM energy.

 

The electrical engineering and classical Maxwell-Heaviside electrodynamics do admit that the source of all EM fields, potentials, and their energy is in fact their associated source charges. However, those silly models also assume there is absolutely no energy input to those same source charges.

 

So every electrical engineering department, professor, and textbook continues to teach a model implying that every EM field, EM potential, and joule of EM energy in the universe, is and has been freely created, from nothing at all. That’s a total violation of the conservation of energy law!

 

They do this unwittingly because their model doesn’t even model the active vacuum exchange (or a curved spacetime). It assumes that the vacuum environment and spacetime environment are inert – which has been falsified in physics for nearly a century.

 

All this is just to set in proper perspective what’s going on with a statically charged capacitor or any other dipolarity. It is in fact pouring out EM energy – real energy – steadily, which our instruments detect as a so-called “static” field.

 

Now let’s talk about “catching and using” some energy from such a flow.

 

Suppose I have some charge that is “pinned” and therefore “static”. It isn’t free to move and thus form a current.

 

And suppose I place a dipolar source of potential V close to that pinned charge. Well, V is actually a set of EM energy flows (Whittaker 1903). So the potential energy V will flow through the short intervening space and flow over and around that charge q. The ambient vacuum, having flux and energy density, is therefore also a scalar potential. Any other scalar potential V is just a change to that ambient vacuum potential. So the “flow of potential” is actually the flow of the change of the ambient vacuum potential.

 

When the V flows around and over the static charge q, that means that the local vacuum in which q is embedded – and with which it continuously exchanges energy and from which the charge q continuously extracts the energy for its fields and potentials – now changes. So the “activity rate” (or more properly, the reaction cross section) of the charge alters, and the charge now interacts with a different flux rate and thus emits a different EM rate, increasing or decreasing its associated EM fields and potentials accordingly.

 

In short, the charge q is freely “potentialized” , as engineers put it.

 

Now by definition there is no current involved, and so there has been no power produced and no work produced. Everything so far is purely free for the taking.

 

From any given nonzero source potential V, one can “catch” as much energy W as one desires, if one uses enough charge q. The equation is  W = Vq. And it costs absolutely no work etc. to get that Vq (the units of which are joules).

 

But instead of doing things in space, we are taught to do them in electrical circuits. The wires direct the free flow of potential from the source, etc. And the collecting charges used are the Drude electrons bouncing around inside the conductors. Here we see a problem: The charges are not “pinned” and are very, very quick to respond to any change (something like 10exp(-16) or so seconds “relaxation time” required to “get moving”). So as we potentialize (catch some energy on) those charges, they immediately move as current, and the energy is being dissipated in the circuit as work.

 

And here is the diabolical characteristic of the standard closed current loop circuit. We are foolishly taught to just “wire in” the dipolarity of the source dipole (the generator or battery). Voila! That stupid circuit now equalizes the back emf and the forward emf, and also makes the total forward current equal to the total back current (through the back emf).

 

So precisely half of all the EM energy now freely collected in that external circuit, is used to do nothing but do work on that source dipolarity, knocking all the charges back out of there and destroying the dipole. That destroys the flow of energy called “voltage” (actually potential). Hence half the work done by the external circuit is simply to destroy its own source of freely flowing energy from the vacuum. The other half of the work is done in the loads and losses of the external circuit. That means that less work gets done in the load, than was done on the “external” source dipolarity to destroy it.

 

Well, how do we keep such a stupid circuit functioning, so the load will continue to be powered? We have to do something to restore that source dipolarity again. In short, we have to put in some external energy to the battery of generator, and we have to furnish and pay for that energy. The energy input we pay for is then used to push those internal charges back apart again and restore the dipole, thereby restoring the free extraction of energy from the vacuum that gives the free flow of potential down the conductors of the external circuit.

 

In a 100% efficient generator, we would have to input precisely as much energy to restore the source dipolarity, as the work done by the external circuit on that dipolarity to destroy it.

 

So we would always have to input more additional energy, than the energy the stupid circuit let get to the load to power it.

 

In short, electrical engineers are taught to unwittingly use only circuits that destroy their own power source faster than they power their loads. That guarantees COP<1.0, and it also comfortably keeps that power meter on our homes and offices and industries. It keeps all that oil and coil and gas burning, all the pipelines, all the long transmission lines, the great power plants, and the entire armada of biosphere-poisoning apparatuses that constitute our present “power system”.

 

But back to the static situation with the charges q pinned, and a source of external energy (external potential V) momentarily connected. Suppose we keep those collecting charges q “pinned” long enough to get the potential V flowed across and around them, potentializing them so that they statically collect some energy W as W = Vq. Now we have Vq joules of energy freely collected. We did not damage or reduce our external source of potential V. But we just let the vacuum itself give us some free energy Vq on those charges q.

 

Voila! Now we’ve got the energy “for free” directly from the vacuum. We can have as much as we wish collected, if we just used enough pinned charge q for the given voltage V.

 

And now let us just DISCONNECT and switch away that source of potential, at the same time switching in what would have been a shunting diode and resistive load, so that current can only flow one way through the load. I now have a completed “external circuit” but one with the original source of potential disconnected so the circuit can do nothing to it at all.

 

So I have an “energized” or “charged” dipolar complete circuit, containing a load, and a diode which only allows a flow of electrons in one direction. That circuit will now “discharge”, pushing electrons as current through the load, until the back emf rises and destroys the dipolarity (i.e., until – in EE terms – the collected energy in the circuit is dissipated in the load).

 

Assume for a moment perfect, work-free switching. Then all that costs me absolutely nothing with respect to my original external source of potential. So I can do it again. And again. And again.

 

We can impulsively power that load “for free” this way, in theory.

 

In the real world, of course, one does have some switching costs. But let us assume that is as efficient as the state of the art allows – such as photocoupled switching, etc. with very little power used in switching.

 

Now we can get Vq joules of work out of the load, with only a smaller switching cost – let’s say E(sw).

 

But the load isn’t 100% efficient either, so only a fraction k of that Vq will actually be useful external work done by the load.

 

This means that I get kVg joules of work output, while using E(sw) switching joules I have to furnish and pay for.

 

So I get a COP = (kVg)/E(sw). If E(sw) < kVg, then I have COP>1.0. And that obeys every law of physics and every law of thermodynamics.

 

The beauty now is that my “external” potential source was not deteriorated or drained. So I can just do it over and over, and keep on powering the load. Now we worry about smoothing, etc. for continuous powering, etc. – but that is all “standard electrical engineering” you can hire done at any university of EE lab.

 

The main points are:

(1)     EM energy is ALWAYS an energy flow or a set of flows.

(2)     Any dipolarity exhibits broken symmetry in the vacuum flux, and hence it is an inexhaustible source of real EM energy flow, like a gushing oil well or flowing river.

(3)     If one simply catches and uses some of the “freely flowing energy”, one is free to use that collected energy as one wishes and as one is skilled enough to do.

(4)     If one uses the standard stupid closed circuit loop and unpinned charge collectors, one will always guarantee COP<1.0, and one will always have to continue to pay to “power the darn thing” oneself.

(5)     If one never lets the external current (when the external circuit is in operation and powering its load) flow back through the back emf of the external source, the source furnishes all the voltage (potential energy flow) without damage or deterioration. The source remains “unaffected”. Again, from a given voltage V, one can extract as much energy W as one wishes. And one can do it in sequential operations where W = Vq(1) + Vq(2) + Vq(3) + ….+ Vq(i) + …

(6)     So by using STATIC potentialization of the energy collecting process, then switching away the undamaged source of potential, and THEN allowing discharge of the collected energy to power the load, the operation can continue with only some switching costs rather than paying for the energy dissipated in the load.

(7)     One moves from the standard “lossy diode” kind of engineering to a “triode” engineering where the cathode current is free and one only has to pay for the grid signal for switching and controlling.

 

Hopes this helps understand the process.

 

Best wishes,
 

Tom Bearden