Nikola Tesla’s Wireless Power Transmission—Could It Have Worked?

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This video does not really explain what Tesla was trying to do. Tesla believed that by power could be sent in bulk from a transmitting station to a receiver which were tuned to the same resonant frequency just like a radio station and receiver. This was supposed to use the Earth like a giant battery, into which energy could be pumped and then extracted anywhere on Earth. As I described it in my review of Bernard Carlson’s 2013 book, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age:

The centrepiece of Tesla’s post-Niagara work, the wireless transmission of power, was based upon a flawed theory of how electricity interacts with the Earth. Tesla believed that the Earth was filled with electricity and that if he pumped electricity into it at one point, a resonant receiver anywhere else on the Earth could extract it, just as if you pump air into a soccer ball, it can be drained out by a tap elsewhere on the ball. This is, of course, complete nonsense, as his contemporaries working in the field knew, and said, at the time. While Tesla continued to garner popular press coverage for his increasingly bizarre theories, he was ignored by those who understood they could never work. Undeterred, Tesla proceeded to build an enormous prototype of his transmitter at Wardenclyffe, intended to span the Atlantic, without ever, for example, constructing a smaller-scale facility to verify his theories over a distance of, say, ten miles.

Sadly, Tesla, who contributed mightily to the large scale deployment of electricity and the electrification of industry through his inventions of polyphase power distribution and the induction motor, became a crackpot in his later life, working on “inventions” which anybody with a grasp on electromagnetic theory should know could not possibly work.

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I will take the side of Betteridge’s Law on this one … the answer is ‘no’

Although we’ve gotten a great deal of mileage of information wireless transmission over long distances using increasingly sophisticated modulation techniques.

To date, it seems like the only wireless power transmission with practical applications that has helped us do away with wires are inductive chargers. But those are limited distance wise and I am not aware of any other instances where resonant transmission works in practice.

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Inductive chargers are, of course, a near field device and not subject to the inverse square law which kills long-distance transmission of a substantial amount of energy. Reasonably efficient beamed transmission of power over line of sight paths via microwaves has been demonstrated, indicating a large scale solar power satellite downlink could be as much as 85% efficient, but this is a point to point link, not broadcasting power over the horizon as Tesla imagined.

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"the wireless transmission of power, was based upon a flawed theory […] Tesla believed that the Earth was filled with electricity and that if he pumped electricity into it at one point, a resonant receiver anywhere else on the Earth could extract it"

Obviously wrong by several accounts:

(1) the Maxwell theory (still in use today) is itself provably flawed as it ignores antenna noise (a very annoyingly persistent reality for any RF engineer). Yet, the book author, and today’s universities, still blindly believe that the traditional “Field Theory” model is “serious and solid” - unlike Tesla.

(2) Tesla was not a theoretician, he was an engineer experimenting and unwilling to formalize what was not fully understood (unlike Maxwell, a mathematician, who simply excluded everything he was not able to formalize).

(3) the (flawed) “quantum theory” (heavily relying on postulates - the opposite of a theory) has used the word “entanglement” for Tesla’s “resonance”. That might be a distinction without a difference: in our century entanglement has been tested over long distances to transmit information.

“Science” is an attempt to explain how things repeatedly work around us. “Theories” are by nature imperfect and have often been replaced by “better working” theories.

"This is, of course, complete nonsense, as his contemporaries working in the field knew, and said, at the time."

This is not a scientific argument - just an attempt to undermine Tesla by ignoring his achievements. After all, if he could demonstrate something repeatedly (and teach others how to do it), then it was the indisputable evidence that he found something NEW and USEFUL (even if he could not build a theory to explain it):

Not a word on Tesla demonstrations in universities showing how his waves were able to seamlessly traverse a metal barrier? (beyond near-field)

Not a word on Tesla electric (personal) car running all day long without ever stopping to recharge its battery? (there are photos, and testimonials)

In today’s economic environment, such a feat would be quite handy for many drivers - and my bet is that they could not care less if there’s no theory endorsed by the Orthodox Science (which, by the way, has lost a bit of its credibility these last years - on the top of being unable to make any significant progress in the past century).

"While Tesla continued to garner popular press coverage for his increasingly bizarre theories, he was ignored by those who understood they could never work."

So, it is fine to publicly claim that Tesla was a crook (even here, despite the “criticize ideas, not people” policy), but there’s nobody to ever question official theories that expose so openly their inherent weaknesses.

Call that “Science” if you can.

"Undeterred, Tesla proceeded to build an enormous prototype of his transmitter at Wardenclyffe, intended to span the Atlantic,"

The fact that he was ready to invest his own reputation, time and money on such a project without the support of the official “Science” demonstrates his sincerity.

Given his achievements (almost everything using electricity around us owes from Nikola Tesla’s patents) the author’s lack of attempt to question his motivations beyond the alleged “crackpotry” is, ahem, odd if not shameful.

"…without ever, for example, constructing a smaller-scale facility to verify his theories over a distance of, say, ten miles."

This is also incorrect. His first public demonstrations to convince investors were involving wireless transfers over such a distance range. There were photos made of this event and almost all movies on the subject show it (cf. “The Current War” 2017).

JW: "Reasonably efficient beamed transmission of power over line of sight paths via microwaves has been demonstrated, indicating a large scale solar power satellite downlink could be as much as 85% efficient, but this is a point to point link, not broadcasting power over the horizon as Tesla imagined."

In fact, Nikola Tesla achieved:

(1) 100+% efficiency (what he called the “magnifier effect”).
(2) consumers fetching energy from energy-plants (not broadcasting).
(3) energy transfers traversing obstacles like rain/fog, forests and mountains (no “line of sight” required).

#1 might be due to synchronized neutrinos being caught by the field.
#2 explains how lossless transfers take place (broadcasting wastes energy).
#3 demonstrates that Nikola Tesla knew much (much) better than his detractors.

COMMENT

Nikola Tesla needed such a big antenna because using high-voltage currents made it easier (at the time, due to the lack of electronics) to establish a link between an energy-source and one (his electric car) or several energy-consumer devices (light bulbs planted in a remote field).

This explains his difficulties, the required budget, and the lack of a theoretical basis to support his findings (very high-voltage currents made things visible to him).

Today, cheap electronic devices allow people to replicate Tesla findings. And we can also explain better (than him at the time) why and how it takes place (by correcting flawed orthodox science).

And, like Nikola Tesla, they prove their point with prototypes:

In our case, by making lossless wireless energy transfers between Faraday cages.

Since these devices, operated by different people, repeatedly work under different environments (labs, forest, lake…), this is -by definition- “real Science”.

The number of people rejecting reality (while certainly making a political consensus, often driven by a convergence of interests) is irrelevant as far as “Science” is concerned.

“In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.” -Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“If you think, that only social sciences, law, history and literature are hijacked, you did not pay attention. Think that mathematics and physics are free? Think again.”
-Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

“Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”

“Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has, as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.”

“What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride. Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightment.”
-Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

TODAY’S STATE OF THE ART

Summary:
http://twd.ag/archives/twd_wlt_1-pager.pdf

Scientific paper:
http://twd.ag/archives/twd_energy_memorandum.pdf

Slides:
http://twd.ag/archives/twd_wireless-si.pdf

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This topic as always fascinated me in that it seems to deal with a fundamental problem, i.e., how to maintain coherence in a dissipative medium in order to conserve and enhance energy transference. Boundry layer resistance reduced by laminar flow seems to be one solution. I was wondering if any of these approaches might be credible.

Acoustic and Electromagnetic Bullets, in: Microwave and Particle Beam Sources and Directed Energy Concepts, Howard E. Brandt (ed.)
Moses, Harry E.
Proceedings of SPIE, 1989, Vol. 1061, pp.403-416.
(ADEPTS = Acoustic Directed Energy Pulse Train, EDEPTS = Electromagnetic Pulse Train}
Think pulse trains of solitons, non-sinosudal, persisting in a dissipative medium which regains it initial energy at target.

Intense Neutralized Beams, in: Microwave and Particle Beam Sources and Directed Energy Concepts, Howard E. Brandt (ed.)
Wessel, F.J.; Fisher, A.; Rostoker, N.; Song, J.
Proceedings of SPIE, 1989, Vol. 1061, pp.691-700.

Curved Electromagnetic Missiles, in: Microwave and Particle Beam Sources and Directed Energy Concepts, Howard E. Brandt (ed.)
Myers, John M.; Shen, Hao-Ming; Wu, Tai Tsun
Proceedings of SPIE, 1989, Vol. 1061, pp.361-369.

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FYI, this technology has been presented to the Munich Security Conference 2019:

You can list as many irrelevant references as you find necessary - they are not addressing the point.
It is as useful as giving references about apples when we are talking about the ocean.

Since this nicely designed forum shows how many clicks a published link has received, I can tell that nobody has read the “scientific paper” that I have posted above, which explains in details how the technology works, and goes as far as to compare it to today’s “state of the art” (in 30 pages).

Competent readers could skip all this and jump to the (still virgin) above “summary” link (a document of less than two pages exposing the unique achievements of this technology).

For the rest of the audience (not willing to learn by reading the “scientific paper”), again, microwaves and lasers won’t be of any use without a clear line of sight (even clouds, fog, rain, snow, or trees will absorb the signal).

What about engaging a discussion about the differences between Nikola Tesla’s technology and today’s sorry state of things?

After all, that was the reason for this article to exist, right?

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The “scientific paper” linked to is a “confidential information memorandum” in the form of a mix-up of a business plan and investment prospectus for a crackpot scheme based upon Nikola Tesla’s crank ideas of resonant power transmission which fly in the face of Maxwell’s equations and a more than a century and half of experience with electromagnetism. Tesla, after wasting large sums invested by his gullible backers, never made this work, and these people, whether consciously scammers or ignorant idealists, will produce the same non-results if anybody is foolish enough to put money into their scheme.

All of this crackpot stuff reduces the signal to noise ratio here and the lack of engagement with it indicates a lack of interest among the audience of this site, who are firmly grounded in reality through lifelong experience. Statements like “microwaves and lasers won’t be of any use without a clear line of sight (even clouds, fog, rain, snow, or trees will absorb the signal).” do not promote the crackpot agenda (absorption of electromagnetic radiation by water in the transmission path depends strongly upon the wavelength, and longer wave microwaves have little difficulty with clouds and fog, as decades of experience with radar and microwave signal transmission demonstrates).

This forum is a poor fit for advocacy of nonsense. There are many other places on the Internet better suited to such discussions, and it would be best to take them there.

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In order of relevance:

With radio waves a large wavelength implies a low bandwidth (the transmission speed C is constant).

With Tesla waves the frequency and wavelength can be modulated independently (slightly changing the transmission speed) so that massive parallelism can take place without creating interference (and then saturation of the frequency band).

Lasers and microwaves require a “clear line of sight” without obstacles like mountains (refraction, diffraction, absorption).

Tesla waves seamlessly traverse Faraday cages and the water of a lake - whatever the frequency and wavelength.

But all this is discussed in the document you claim to have read so why did you raise these points as an alleged evidence of our lack of scientific ground?

(1) Ad hominem attacks (“scam”, “crank”, “crackpot”) no scientific argument;
(2) Denial of Maxwell equations being false despite indisputable provided evidence;
(3) Denial of Nikola Tesla achievements despite historical records (demonstrations in many universities, several patents and prototypes, his own car converted from petrol to electricity) and, since 2016, our working prototype.

No progress in the discussion because there’s no will to start one.

“the audience of this site, who are firmly grounded in reality through lifelong experience”

“Errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum."
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - AD 65)

As you have created this article, you should have stated that no dissent is allowed. It’s your forum after all, and we have seen that you are not shy to break the rules imposed to others.

This mindset is now reaching an end. People realize how much time and money we have lost.
If the West does not want to make progress, there’s 80% more of humanity on this Planet.
They have been waiting so long for their time to come that they won’t miss the point.

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I have muted this user, who claims to be the CEO of the company “TWD Industries AG” which is promoting Tesla energy transmission “technology” as described in the documents linked above. This discussion is non-productive, and I do not believe our members have interest in fringe or crackpot topics such as Tesla’s purported “revolutionary inventions” or “killer electromagnetic radiation”.

I consider this matter closed.

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