Could Tesla's Broadcast Power System Work?

Pinball Wizard asks: "I ran into a nice Web site while doing some research on the life of Nikola Tesla. Turns out PBS is doing a special on him, beginning Dec. 12. In case you're not familiar with the man, he invented alternating current and radio, as well as the basic concepts behind all of our wireless control and communication. Besides alerting the Slashdot population to the documentary, I thought I'd pose a question to the EE's in the crowd. Tesla was a bit of a rebel, and many of his inventions never came to light because they conflicted with the interests of corporations or wealthy people with more influence. The most interesting of these to me is the transmission of electricity through the upper atmosphere. Obviously that would make electricity much harder to meter and control by monopolistic interests. Was his idea feasible? After reading about Tesla, I seriously wonder how much we screwed ourselves by following the interests of money, rather than listening to this scientific giant."

Comments

The Tesla Cult

[Zoyd]

Skeptical Inquirer did a cover story on Tesla and the pseudoscience cult that has formed around him:

Skeptical Inquirer
SUMMER 1994 (vol 18, no 4.): `Extraordinary science' and the strange legacy of Nikola Tesla, by Johnson. Nikola Tesla: Genius, visionary, and eccentric, by Johnson.

Their take on it was that he a lot of good ideas, but also a lot of bad ones, and that the common perception of him as an infallible genius is misplaced.

It has

[JohnG]

There have been people that have done so on a smaller level using two tesla coils. I think the farthest one I read about reached about 100 feet or so, of course those were relatively small coils, no where near the monster that Tesla was building at wardenclyffe. The problem that occured is that Marconi came in and stole the idea as the radio (violated 14 Tesla patents and even had his patent revoked by the courts, but alas the history books still list Marconi as the inventor of the radio [and Edison as the man who brought power to the world even though he said AC would never work!]) Nowadays it wouldn't work becuase there is already to much competing airways as many others have said, not to mention Tesla coils make electrical appliances near them go batty, back before electricity was mainstream there could have been ways around it, such as putting faraday cages around electrical appliances to protect them, but now that is near impossible and another reason why the idea is lost.

Tesla Foibles

[maggard]

Couple of problems with Tesla's idea of pumping electricity directly through the aether:

1. Fantastic transmission losses. Some enormously large percentage of the power pumped in would be lost (as in 'not serve a useful purpose'.)
2. Wildly variable service. In the clear power would theoretically follow the inverse-square law but almost anything would mess with this & cause it to vary: trees, streams, underground streams, wet/dry soil, weather (do not operate in a shower!) and that's well before we get to things like buildings, walls, metal-objects, etc.
3. Hazardous local environment. At the energies Tesla was talking every metallic object nearby would be carrying a hefty charge. Touching any of these could well be hazardous: Local fence-wires would sizzle with charge, metal doors could be deadly. I have no idea what this much radiated energy over a long period would do to local biological activity but the simple random shocks alone couldn't be good.
4. Disrupt the very devices it was intended to supply. For simple object like a fluorescent tube Tesla coils are great but the minute you try to run something with sophisticated requirements you're hosed. Good grounds would be difficult, power is DC, the supply would vary wildly. Furthermore parts of motors & other devices would be receiving charge almost randomly. I can't imagine trusting something as basic as an elevator winch motor under these conditions much less microelectronics like my digital watch, cellphone, etc.

Look, Tesla is a fascinating (and tragic) character but some of his ideas, were, well, impracticable.

I used to work with Tesla coils almost daily & let me tell you they are not a good solution. Indoors and at comparatively low power they were hazardous & required care to operate, scaled up and put into The Real World they'd have been regularly deadly. Not deadly as in once-a-year power-main-fell-on-somebody or Little-Bobby-put-a-hairpin-in-the-socket-&-zapped- himself deadly but random step in a puddle & die deadly, sit between two angled metals walls & fry deadly, metal-fillings in your jaw grow warm & make you ill deadly.

ps For all of those automatically saying we should re-study Tesla's idea & going for the 'underdog': there's a cult out there waiting for you & no I don't want any carnations in the airport.