Russ Gries
Russ Gries | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Open-source experimental replication of new-energy, plasma and LENR devices |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics, experimental replication, alternative energy research |
| Institutions | RWGresearch |
Russ Gries is an independent experimental researcher who runs RWGresearch, an open-source "garage lab" project that attempts to build and test claimed new-energy, plasma, cold fusion/LENR and Tesla-related devices, and publishes the attempts as they happen through his YouTube channel and the open-source-energy.org forum. He is best known within the independent-inventor community not for a theory of his own but for a working method: rather than asserting that a claimed effect is real, he builds the device, instruments it, and shows the result — whatever the result is — to an audience that is invited to criticise it.
Biography
Published sources say little about Gries's personal background, and this article does not speculate about it. What is documented is his research practice. RWGresearch was created, in his own description, "to help Russ promote his work, share his results and work as a team with his subscribers", and it operates as a small home laboratory funded by viewer donations and built largely from salvaged parts. He has emphasised that serious experimental work does not require an institutional budget, noting for example that "old CRT TVs and computer monitors people are throwing out every day have a lot of good magnet wire in them", and that most of his early coils were wound from recycled material at essentially no cost.
He maintains the RWGresearch website and forum presence, broadcasts live experimental sessions, and for several years ran an annual community "Pulse Motor Build-Off" (documented from 2012 to 2020) in which participants built and compared competing motor designs.
Scientific contributions
Gries's contribution is methodological rather than theoretical. The independent-energy field is characterised by strong claims made on the strength of a single demonstration; Gries's response has been to make the *attempt* itself the published object. Experiments are documented in long video series as they proceed, including the dead ends, the instrumentation problems and the runs that produce nothing, so that a viewer can judge the evidence rather than the announcement. He describes the approach as "live open science" and as open-source research: designs, part sources and measurements are released so that others can build the same apparatus and check the outcome independently.
Among the replication projects listed on RWGresearch are:
- The Papp noble gas engine. Working from the designs of Bob Rohner, Gries built a test chamber and a 3.25-inch piston intended to capture plasma force, charged with a noble-gas mixture (helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon) and driven by high-voltage discharges of several hundred joules across a 10 mm gap. He set the goal explicitly as an empirical question — to demonstrate "that the Papp noble gas engine works, or at least prove that you can take noble gases and do work with the plasma they form". More than twenty video updates document the build and the test runs; the project record reports observations of plasma behaviour but does not report a confirmed engine, and no claim of sustained useful work has been published from it.
- Cold fusion / LENR. Projects include CR-39 solid-state nuclear track detector testing and a zeolite-and-palladium cell, both framed as attempts to look for a detectable signature rather than as announcements of one.
- Water-electrolysis and Tesla-adjacent work. Replications of Stanley Meyer's water fuel cell and EPG apparatus, Bedini charging systems, Rodin coils, and a "Lenz-lawless" generator.
- Electromagnetic and high-energy apparatus. A 10,000-joule railgun, magnetic levitation rigs, impulse magnetising experiments and a high-voltage water bridge.
- Replications of other researchers' devices, including a small-scale build of theGAPpower motor.
The honest summary of this body of work is that it is a large, publicly documented set of attempts. RWGresearch's project pages record what was built and what was observed; they do not claim verified over-unity or a confirmed anomalous power source from any of the replications above. In a field where such claims are made freely, the absence of one is itself informative, and Gries's willingness to leave a replication published and unresolved rather than declare it a success is the reason his testing is taken seriously by other experimenters.
Conference appearances
Gries presented at the ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference run by Tesla Tech (Steven R Elswick's organisation) in Albuquerque, New Mexico:
- "Investigating 21st Century Technologies thru Experimentation" — Session 7, Friday 1 August 2014, 6:00 PM (issued as conference recording ET1415). The programme described the talk as "Original Garage Lab, Open Source Alternative Energy Research", asking "What does it take to be an open source garage lab energy researcher? ... Dedication and a lot of resourcefulness!", and noting that his research "includes Papp engines, 3D printers, levitators, Rodin coils, Meyers water engine, and more". Other speakers at the 2014 conference included Moray B King, Dale Pond, Rainer Huck and Harry Jabs.
He also spoke on garage-lab open-source energy research at the Breakthrough Energy Movement (Global BEM) conference in 2013.
External links
- RWGresearch — project site and open-projects index
- RWGresearch on YouTube
- open-source-energy.org — forum where his replications are discussed
- Russ Gries on X