William STONEBURG
Power Supply
Largo-Seminole Times (6-7-1983)
“Largo Man Builds Self-Charging Power
Supply”
by Chuck Albury
The working model of William G. Stoneburg’s power plant isn’t all that impressive.
A few gauges on a crude panel board. An alternator that came out of a police cruiser.
A motor that has seen better days. And some wire coils that form a homemade direct current to direct current transformer.
“But I could put this on a golf cart, hook it to the batteries, and drive to Jacksonville or all the way to New York”, he says.
What Stoneburg says he has done is invent something that can recharge an electric power plant while it is in use.
“I know it works because it was tested successfully on a small electric car”, he emphasizes.
But it doesn’t stop there. According to Stoneburg, the device could just as easily supply the necessary power for a house or an even larger system.
Stoneburg, who learned about electricity and motors while he was serving in the US Navy, had a refrigeration and air conditioning shop next door to Custom Gold Carts, owned by Bob Way.
“One day in 1978 I had time to do some thinking and happened to notice all those golf carts, plugged in to recharge their batteries after use”, he said. “It occurred to me there must be a better way”.
Stoneburg says he first put his ideas on paper and eventually worked out the mathematics of changing high voltage and low amperage to low voltage and high amperage.
“I didn’t see why my idea wouldn’t work so I built a bench model and still couldn’t find anything wrong with it”, he said, “but I recognized I didn’t have the technical knowledge to completely perfect this”.
The system runs of the batteries, which power the motor, which runs the alternator, which puts more energy back into the batteries than they are providing. But it isn’t perpetual motion, Stoneburg warns.
“There are things which wear out and must be replaced”, he points out.
He does have a US Patent, which protects him in this country. But efforts to interest a US firm in the invention have so far been fruitless. This year he grew tired of waiting and sent 22 letters to foreign governments, seeking their interest. Replies came from Israel, West Germany and France. Stoneburg saw some of their representatives when he attended a trade show in Orlando.
“They are interested”, Stoneburg says, “but they want me to come to their countries and bring my bench model along to demonstrate. That would cost more money than I have. I’ve spent about everything on this project as I can”.
Stoneburg acknowledges that his model is set up to perform only limited bench operations.
“But with proper research and development, it could be applied to power almost anything now operating on petroleum fuels or electricity”, he says. “It could be used as a supplement or total power source package”.
William G. Stoneburg