Saving Energy
Negawatts is a word coined by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute; meaning electrical energy saved. There are a lot of ways to maintain or increase our standard of living, yet use less electricity to do it. Using proper techniques, we could double the amount of work done with the electrical energy we generate today, thus 'creating' free energy. This would be energy 'created' without building any more power plants, no upgrading of utility lines, no additional generating expense whatsoever. This created free energy would mostly be the product of innovative efficiency thinking and engineering.
Gathering Energy
In this case we are actually gathering direct electrical free energy from the environment. We see two distinct types of electrical energy that we are designing machines to gather; electromagnetic waves, and free ions.
Converting Energy
This is the largest conventional way of making electrical free energy. Usually there is some readily available source of environmental (or 'dirty') free energy which can be converted to electrical energy. This electrical energy is 'Free' to whoever converted it, except for the costs and responsibility of the equipment. Usually an electric utility is formed to convert energy, and then the resulting electricity is sold to you. The technology now exists for practical small scale environmental energy conversion. Nearly any kind of energy can be converted to any other kind. Example; the potential energy of water behind a dam is converted to kenetic energy through pipes and to mechanical energy in a turbine and finally to electrical energy when the turbine drives a generator.