As I mentioned a few posts back, I am always interested in what’s going on with Steorn — the Irish company which claims to have developed an energy technology based on a novel use of magnetic interaction (they call it Orbo).
Steorn CEO Shaun McCarthy made some interesting comments on his Facebook page a few days ago, which sounded like the company was going to come out with some interesting news in the coming weeks. Today (McCarthy’s birthday) he posted a short video of something that I have never seen from the company before — a spinning rotor in proximity to what appears to be a single stator magnet. There seems to be at least one magnet inside the rotor.
The video can also be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151999283413977&set=vb.644973976&type=2&theater
Last week, McCarthy wrote on Facebook, “I’m a purist OU man, no wires”, so it seems like this may have been what he was referring to.
Back in 2007 there was supposed to be a demonstration of a device something like this at Kinetica art gallery in London — and the devices they brought to demonstrate simply didn’t work, which was a huge embarrassment to the company, and McCarthy in particular who had pushed for the demonstration even when employees told him they weren’t ready. For many years, people have asked to see a video of an orbo running on ‘pure’ magnet power (no wires attached), but nothing has been forthcoming until now.
It must be stressed that this is a low quality video, only 18 seconds in length, and we have no real details about what is going on here. But it does give a bit of an indication of a type of configuration that Steorn might be working on. If they are going to come out publicly and showcase their technology, they will have to do much more than this to convince most people that they have some kind of novel energy technology — but I think this video is worth noting, as part of the mysterious and erratic Steorn story.
Should this be taken seriously? I suppose that depends on your opinion — Steorn has many critics and it’s not hard to understand why. However, I am one who has an open mind on the company. I am willing to wait for the story to be played out, and will watch for new evidence validating their technology.
There is one document that for me carries some weight in favor of Steorn’s claims. It was a report produced by Irish consulting engineer John A. M. Rice, who examined and tested one of Steorn’s systems, and authored a report in which he concluded that a Steorn device using magnetic interactions did produce a gain of energy that were repeatable and consistent. (See pages 20-21 of the report for Rice’s conclusions).
Since E-Cat World is a site where we cover interesting news in the world of energy technology, I will continue to cover Steorn here as I see developments warrant.
UPDATE (March 7th): This is a brief FB exchange I had this morning with Shaun McCarthy:
FA: A lot of interest in the new video, Shaun. What’s the plan with this configuration? Will you engage the public with this?
SM: No rush to engage at this point – will do once we have a load of other stuff in place
FA: Hephaheat first?
The two things are decoupled – we will put PM Orbo into the public domain when we are fully ready, there is no time pressure on us to do it and we have no deadline or specific schedule, when it happens, it happens.
Note: PM Orbo refers to permanent magnetic orbo — which seems to be what is shown in the video.
