Steven and Everybody,

As is evident in the links you post, switched reluctance motors can be very powerful and very efficient in conventional terms. The purpose of my DVD is to provoke original thought in the mind of the viewer by showing that even a well understood phenomena like back EMF can be looked at in a fresh way.

I do not claim to have invented anything. What I am proposing is more of a new METHOD of operating these machines, then anything else. The point is, when a coil of wire wrapped around an iron core is turned ON, it produces a magnetic field. That magnetic field can then be used to attract a piece of iron, producing mechanical energy. Then the coil can be turned OFF, and the collapsing magnetic field will induce a new pulse of electricity that can be recaptured by the circuitry. In well designed systems, the magnetic field can continue to produce more mechanical energy even while it is decaying. The combined mechanical energy produced from both the applied electrical energy AND the recovered electrical energy both act in the forward direction. Because the electrical energy recovered by the circuit can continue to produce more mechanical energy, properly designed systems should be able to exceed the total mechanical outputs of other types of motors for their respective inputs. The electricity recovered can off-set the electricity applied to run the motor, but both can produce mechanical energy that is additive in the forward direction. That is the METHOD of operation I am suggesting. To the best of my knowledge, this is a new METHOD of running an electric motor. The method can be applied to dozens of geometries.

The switched reluctance motor designs shown on these links will not work well with this new method I am proposing because they all show a COMMON STATOR connection. The coils turn ON and OFF, but the magnetic field is always present in the stator core. The coils are just shifting the location of the POLES as they are presented to the rotor. The field never really turns OFF. This is partly why they need all the extra neutralizing coils and things.

Granted, the designs I am proposing are simplified, even stylized, to help you understand the CONCEPT of operation. There are definitely subtleties to the operations of these motors that I do not discuss. If you build something, you will start to see these things. But at least you will be at a point of doing something genuinely new and learning to optimize a promising design.

John's methods of electrical energy recovery are ONE HALF of this method. They are a very important half, but they are only half. The other half is the optimization of motor torque in the rotor-stator interaction. The amount of torque possible here is based on the magnetic field strength, the minimization of the air gap in the magnetic circuit, the geometry of the pole face interaction between the rotor and stator, and the timing. The METHOD I am proposing brings these two halves together to produce a motor that takes best advantage of both.

Currently, there are NO switched reluctance motors that I am aware of that run on these principles.

I hope this helps.

Peter