Interview with Steorn CEO

Engadget has a long interview with Sean McCarthy, CEO of Steorn, the Dublin compnay that says it has a device that can produce more energy than it consumes.

Not a lot of new information is disclosed in this interview (McCarthy's explanation for why the Orbo demo failed on July 4th is still troubling), but it's interesting to hear McCarthy talk about his company.

I think he either (mistakenly) believes he's onto something, or is doing this as a publicity stunt to get attention for something else the company is really working on.

ENGADGET: So that's the company, let's talk a little bit more about the technology that you guys have supposedly developed here. Laws of thermodynamics basically state that you can't achieve 100% efficiency in any apparatus and that there are always transfers of heat and energy in any system. But obviously you guys are claiming 100%+ efficiency. Do you have a statistic or number of what you estimate the energy efficiency level of your machine is? Is it 110% or 150%?

MCCARTHY: It varies from configuration to configuration. I think the largest efficiency that we would have physically measured would be about 485%. These numbers can be misleading. For example we might be getting 485% per joule, which means were getting 4.85 J out, but there could be a configuration that's could be delivering 130% efficiency yet delivering 10 joules. So, the technology itself is pretty well researched in terms of punch line efficiency it's 485%, but that wouldn't be the optimum output of the system. Obviously we're more focused on direct power output of a device than the punchline numbers. 485 to 1 is 4.85, but we could easily say, 10 to 12 joules off of a system is going to have a lower punch line efficiency. And power output is obviously the key factor, energy output is obviously the key factor.