New Power Generator that relies on magnets

[scraw2010]

Hello everybody,
I love the idea of sailing the sea. I also love the idea of being completely self sufficient. I have a friend who is a talented engineer. He built a generator with no moving parts including only coils and magnets. This thing was no bigger than a brick and literally powered a 500 watt load when powered with an input of a few watts (9 volt battery). I watched this guy use it for a week to power some appliances on his boat. He was telling me the other day about plans he had to scale it up and power a Dehler 38 sailboat completely!

Have any of you ever heard of anything like this? If you had a device like that would you feel comfortable using it exclusively to power appliances on your boat when you are out at sea?