@filmfann I think Tesla actually spent more time planning his wireless ac power transmission. I’ve actually made a small one of these (single wire transmission line) and yes they do work. This page goes into detail about Tesla’s very brilliant plan for wireless ac power transmission.
@Afos22 It would be a difficult and very expensive process. It would probally be better to eliminate any type of power grid and have everyone use their own seperate electrical power sources in inside of their own homes.
There was an inventor named Geoffrey Spence who demonstrated an actual working prototype he built on Sept 14th 2001 at a Green Party conference in Salisbury where a number of engineers and physicists were in attendence, this used a cylinder shaped vacuum tube with permanent magnets inside on each of the flat ends of the tube, with means for accelerating an electron beam emmited from a cathode in mostly a tangential direction. A central anode collected all the electrons emmitted from the cathode. Here is the actual patent for the device that is called a “Motionless Electromagnetic Generator”. Apparentely the output only generated around 35 watts and considering the cost of the parts used to build the device it didn’t seem feasible. It could set the stage for tapping energy out of the “zero point” that is in outer space or the “quantum vacuum”. I believe Tesla was working on a similar concept for tapping energy from the zero point.
There was apparantely another inventor (unable to find his name or links at this current time) who was working on a car powered by water subjected to vibration at an undisclosed critical frequency that dissociates into hydrogen and oxygen. Apparently the energy required to do this is claimed to be at a minute fraction of the energy required to the same thing by electrolysis. This inventor was suppositively poisoned and killed three days after his TV presentation had appeared. I will try to find more information on this one.
Here are some very cool links on other self-powered energy devices where actual demonstrations on YouTube are given. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkBNzXPy_p4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFu-s6ZmGyE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv53K9MnDuM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdxhzpYLWCM