Sounds adequate except your last statement scares me:  "On the surface, just adding a flywheel on its own should not give any kind of power gain, so what exactly is he  doing to get the COP>1 effect that he claims?"

Power x Time = Energy   Watts x Seconds = Joules

Any system element that stores energy, be it a flywheel, capacitor, spring, battery, inductor or whatever can easily and inherently exhibit "power gain".  Charge up a capacitor or battery with a trickle charge of 1W and then short it out with a copper bar if you don't understand.  Thousands of watts output, one watt input.  When measuring for energy performance, measuring power is not conclusive unless time is fully acounted for.  I wrote a long post on this in this thread. 

If you just cannot or will not measure total watthours in and out while taking the total machine from a dead stop to full speed full load and then back to a dead stop,

and you insist on only measuring instantaneous power in and out after the machine is already up to speed

and the machine contains a large energy-store, then you must measure the power using only real (purely resistive...no reactive imaginary power loads) and constant steady (no measuring momentary or short peaks) loads

and you must extend the time of steady-state measurement for a period much longer than that period which represents the energy stored in the flywheel and all other kinetic and electrical storage devices in the system.  Long sentence...sorry. 

The measurements must be taken at steady state conditions if only power is to be measured, in other words.  To find out when a steady state is achieved, get the machine up to speed, add loads to whatever output level you desire and let the machine settle back to steady speed before measuring.  During true steady state conditions, the input and load power and flywheel speed will be stable and unchanging.

The input voltage and the load must remain fixed and steady and the system running speed cannot be increasing or decreasing during the measurement period which must be longer than the time constant of all the energy stores combined. 

The idea is you must either measure total input and output energy though at least one full state-cycle or you can measure instantaneous real power but only while the system is absolutely stabilized at equilibrium.  If you measure power while the overall system is either accumulating energy or releasing stored energy, or after the load or the input voltage is varied, or when the flywheel speed is changing, your numbers will  be wrong!

Anything short of taking one of those two proven approaches and you have demonstrated and proven absolutely nothing.  The instantaneous power method is very much more rigorous, tedious and difficult to do, (adding all those steady-state equilibrium requirements and the perceived need to use an inverter, battery, output rectifier and filter capacitor to avoid power factor, phase shift and sine distortion errors) than using the integrated energy product method with genuine wide bandwidth AC multiplying-integrating watthour meters.  

Adding all those extra requirements and external equipment adds many opportunities for accidental error or confusion, not to mention outright fraud and self-delusion.  Trying to compensate the input measurement for the losses of the input inverter or the output bridge rectifier and figuring a factor for the remaining capacitor ripple at the output, (which will be quite large at any power level near the 3500W being claimed unless it is a truly gigantic and very expensive capacitor). 

In my not-all-that-humble opinion, the true multiplying watthour meters method is far, far cheaper, easier, faster and more accurate.   Doing useful metrology on power trains, whether electronic or mechanical, is not as simple and foolproof as most people suppose.

I will not elaborate further unless anyone has challenges or questions about my statements.  Then I will be pleased to prove and/or explain my position further.

Humbugger

@Humbugger

I would have to agree...
I've posted something stating the same several times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel#Physics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
It's not like we're making this up...

~Dingus Mungus

Hi Ash,
if you let the output load of 3500 Watts run for
more than  15 minutes and the input power is
no more than 800 Watts all the time with his setup you
can be sure that you have overunity.

For better calculation afterwards try to get the weights
of all the single wheels and their RPM.

There can not be so much storage in these relatively small
flywheels..
Also they do not rotate so fast, so after a few minutes of time
all their stored energy has be used up and if after 15 minutes
the device can still outputs 3500 Watts  with only 800 Watts of
input we really have "free power".

Looking forward to your tests and many thanks again
to Chas to make this possible.

Regards, Stefan.

Yes, maybe it has to do with "tapping inertia" !

What is interesting is the change of
acceleration of a mass is
described mathematically by a rocking event ( in German language:
"Ruck")

But next then what is the change of a "Ruck" ?
This is never told in university mechanical classes...

Can a "Ruck" or the change of a "Ruck"  tap inertia ?

Hiya Ash,

Just let Chas know that even if his machine is found not to be over unity, his altruistic attitude is what we all hold in common.  I thought I had o/u several times, but my understanding had to change to accept the out come.

It'll only take one good idea to make the world a new place!

Rich

Great answer Rich , and it does Take Altruism to disclose FE. With out OPEN sourced we will never progress, i feel peoples consciousness will alter with this disclosure, de centralization will make us better human beings.

Chas deep down i think knows this, and cares.

 

I agree that Charles has that brave and persistent pioneer attitude we can all use more of.  I also agree that his motives and efforts seem to have been selfless and quite extraordinary for many years! 

If I have said anything in my posts that was perceived as discouraging to Charles, I sincerely apologize.  My only agenda is to help achieve quality energy measurements.

I'm not convinced that everyone is on the same page quite yet regarding all the details of good testing approaches, but I think the problems are mostly in the terminology. 

I agree with Stefan that 15 minutes continuous at any load greater than a couple of KW (real resistive) ought to be plenty of time to settle the system into steady-state running so that instantaneous power measurements would suffice and avoid any error due to flywheel-storage effects.  That "steady-state" approach was one of the two I described.

The other approach requires the watthour meters and simply counts all the energy going in vs all that going out during the entire duration of the runup, plus any arbitrary stable-running period you choose and the complete spin-down. 

Either approach requires using essentially resistive loads on the system output (which ensures only real forward power) and measuring only the real power to the system input from the AC grid (if used).

Output rectification and filtering is not needed given wideband true rms metering and resisive loads.  Power factor into a pure resistance is, by definition, unity; phase shift between voltage and current is, by definition, zero.  True rms metering will take care of any amplitude distortions. 

Meters used must, of course, have enough bandwidth to accommodate the frequency of the output power.  This requirement could be problematic in regard to using low cost watthour meters if the frequency is outside the 45-70Hz range.

Input battery and inverter are not needed if the input power measuring method can measure only real power and ignore reactive power.  Adding reactive power here will falsely lower the COP calculated, as it would make the input appear falsely larger.

Because each of these external elements adds inefficiencies, I'd try to avoid them, personally.  I would guess that Charles would be less comfortable also, seeing several energy-stealing power conditioning devices tacked into the power train.

Of course, if 3500/800 output to input ratios or anything close to that can be achieved in the steady state, those external losses would be easily negligible.  But if the result is only a bit more than unity, or a bit less, it might be hard to sort out all the various external losses.

Okay...I've said all I can say except thanks for listening and giving consideration and thought to my suggestions.  I hope they make sense to you all; they do to me.

Also, thanks to all, especially to Charles and Ashtweth, for facilitating these measurement efforts!  I look forward to seeing the results on video and in Ashtweth's report to the forum. 

Humbugger

After reading all the comments on the tread, it?s amazes me to see ?how smart the energy research people are. (Hum- I enjoy reading your comments. You are like a OU detective! You may get hired for that. Not by me thou LOL.

Good work Chas! You are an inspiring man, your work shall continue to progress and can?t be stop, just so you know.

Like previously has said your discovery may just be ?kinetic storage system?
It may very well look that way for us from outside.

But as a ou research scientist: We must write down the results we find and look into how we can further improve the technology.
And not to write down or spend time with those things that we have not found yet! To do so we throw the baby out with the bath water.
The technological breakthrough that we are achieved in every field today, It could have killed us 200 years a go if we made public announcement about ?inventions that are going to come next 200 years. As we all know that it?s true. Then surely we say the same today that, we are undreamed of the innovations yet to come just  in 10 years. You see the point here. 
 
Just like Chas, we need pioneers and way showers from every race and age.
Just imagine if had few more pioneers like Chas in their experienced and mature years to help us? As Chinese has said: Man is not mature before the age 70. So much for that, lots of mature man barely can walk after the age 70.

Hey you guys remember: It was more then a decade a go that China hired 800 retired German engineers to improve their economy, they weren?t kidding. They know the wisdom of their ancestors.   


Ash?s comments: This is also how Chas described it to me, after he creates center fugal force his system maintains the balance, and only a 'tiny' bit of input is needed to keep the action going.   

This could be the Chas?s invention breakthrough, but can?t we further improve this? Oh sure we can!
But, this will take all of our support thou. Impossible, takes just a little longer.

As from me, how about this:

 Take Chas?s invention and install a prime mover using a 7.5 HP RV  motor?  As we all know 7.5 HP RV Motor uses only 65 to 70 Watts of input power (in a idle mode)

Hey Chas, I hope you get to hear this idea and apply on your invention.

Mem>>