In the summer of 2014 two Russian physicists, the brothers Leonid and Sergey Plekhanov, launched an Indiegogo campaign to build a working version of Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, the giant transmitter Tesla hoped would send electricity through the Earth without wires. They asked for $800,000. According to Physics World, the campaign had raised a little over $40,000, about 5 per cent of the target, and no planetary power transmitter has been demonstrated since.
The story still draws curious readers because it touches two big questions: was Tesla right about wireless power, and could it solve the problem of getting clean energy to everyone? This article explains what the brothers proposed, what the original tower was, what physics says about the idea, and what has happened at Wardenclyffe since.
What the Plekhanov brothers proposed
Leonid and Sergey Plekhanov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and worked in industry. Through a project they called Global Energy Transmission, they said they had spent around five years studying Tesla's patents and notes and modelling his system on computers. Their campaign slogan was confident: “Tesla was right and we are ready to prove it!”
They called their design the Planetary Energy Transmitter. Their campaign pitch set out the vision: vast solar farms in sunny deserts could, in principle, generate enough power for the whole planet, but sending that energy through cables over thousands of kilometres wastes a lot of it. A network of Tesla-style towers, they argued, could use the conductivity of the ground and the upper atmosphere to move power around the world with little loss.
The prototype would be far lighter than Tesla's original. The brothers said their tower would weigh about two tonnes, against the roughly 60 tons usually quoted for Wardenclyffe's structure, thanks to modern materials, and would include a Tesla coil about 20 metres long. The campaign was set to close on 25 July 2014, and the team promised to publish its results freely once the tower was running. Leonid told Physics World that crowdfunding was “one of the best options at this stage” and that they would keep going whatever the outcome.
What Wardenclyffe Tower actually was
Tesla began building Wardenclyffe in 1901 at Shoreham on Long Island, about 100 kilometres from New York City. The financier J. P. Morgan agreed to put $150,000 into the venture in exchange for a controlling share. The brick laboratory was designed by the architect Stanford White, and the tower itself, by White's associate W. D. Crow, rose to around 57 metres (about 187 feet) by late 1902, topped by a large dome.
Morgan expected a system for transatlantic wireless messages. Tesla had bigger plans: he wanted the station to transmit power as well as signals. When he asked for more money, Morgan refused. Guglielmo Marconi had already sent a radio signal across the Atlantic in December 1901 with far simpler equipment, which weakened Tesla's case with investors. By 1906 the project had stalled, and it never became operational.
Tesla mortgaged the property to cover his hotel debts at the Waldorf-Astoria. In 1917 the tower was dynamited and sold for scrap. Rumours later claimed it was demolished because German spies might use it during the First World War, but the real reason was money.
How wireless power works, and where Tesla's idea runs into trouble
Wireless power is real and familiar. Phone charging pads, electric toothbrushes and some electric vehicle chargers use magnetic induction to move energy across a few millimetres or centimetres. Engineers can also beam power over longer distances with microwaves or lasers, though only in small amounts or with careful aiming.
Tesla's vision was different. He believed the Earth could be made to resonate electrically, so that a tower pumping current into the ground would set up a global charge pattern that receivers anywhere could tap. He also thought the ionosphere, the electrically charged upper atmosphere, would act as part of the circuit.
The trouble is that the ground and the atmosphere are not good, lossless conductors. Energy spreads out in all directions, and much of it turns into heat in soil, rock and seawater. Any receiver would also need a way to collect energy from the field without everyone else being able to do the same, which made Tesla's idea hard to sell as a business. Despite more than a century of interest, no one has shown large amounts of power travelling over long distances this way. The feasibility claims in the 2014 campaign came from the brothers' own simulations, not from independent peer-reviewed testing.
Common myths about Tesla and free energy
“Tesla invented free energy and it was suppressed.” Tesla made genuine breakthroughs, above all in alternating current motors and power systems, which still run the world's grid. But no Tesla device produced energy from nothing, and Wardenclyffe failed mainly for lack of money and a workable business model.
“Wardenclyffe was destroyed to stop it working.” The tower was demolished in 1917 to help pay off Tesla's debts, long after work on it had ended.
“Wireless power transmission over continents just needs funding.” Funding helps, but the physical losses described above are the main obstacle. Transmitting power over long distances efficiently still relies on high-voltage cables.
None of this makes Tesla less remarkable. More than 80 years after his death in 1943, he remains one of the most admired and most mythologised inventors in history, and his ideas keep inspiring experiments like the Plekhanovs'.
What happened to the Wardenclyffe site
The site has its own second life. From 1969 to 1992 the photographic company AGFA used it. In 2012 the cartoonist behind the website The Oatmeal launched a fundraiser with the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe to buy the land and turn it into a museum. It reached its $850,000 goal within about a week and eventually collected around $1.37 million, which, with a matching grant from New York State, brought the total above $2.2 million. The centre bought the 15.69-acre property in May 2013.
In July 2014, the same month as the Plekhanovs' campaign, Elon Musk pledged $1 million towards the museum. The property was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 2018. In November 2023 a fire damaged the old laboratory building, although much of Stanford White's brick structure survived, and work on the museum has continued.
Why the 2014 campaign still matters
The Plekhanov campaign is a good example of how Tesla's name can make an extraordinary claim feel plausible. It is worth asking three questions of any similar project: has the method been tested independently, has it been published where other experts can check it, and does it explain how energy losses are avoided? In 2014 the answer to all three was no.
The underlying goal, cheap clean power for everyone, remains worthwhile. Today that work is being done mostly by better solar panels, batteries and long-distance high-voltage lines rather than giant towers, but the curiosity that drove Tesla, and the brothers who tried to finish his work, is part of how new ideas get tested at all.
Sources: Physics World, July 2014: Rebuilding Tesla's tower; Wikipedia: Wardenclyffe Tower; Indiegogo: Planetary Energy Transmitter campaign; original report by Inhabitat.
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