Breakthrough in Solar Energy?  Nope.

A reader wants to raise many millions of dollars to develop the technology described in this presentation, claiming that it’s a breakthrough in generating energy from the sun without using PV or CSP. I respond:

Sorry, but this makes no sense.  Will it generate a large force/pressure?  Yes.  Will it generate large amounts of energy?  No.  Energy is the integral of force over a distance, and this device will do very little of that.

Another way of seeing the fallacy here is to realize that the total energy that this device could possibly produce is the energy incident on that pole, which is very small.

I don’t expect you to take my word for it, so let me offer you this:  When you have a working model up and running, please let me know.

The reader responds: We’re trying to raise money from investors to do exactly that.

Then you’ll need to look for people with almost zero understanding of physics.  I recommend you show this to a local high school science teacher and proceed accordingly.  You’re running a risk of being prosecuted for fraud otherwise.