Is Wireless Power Closer Than We Think?
Tesla Would Be Proud
A few years back, Marin Soljačić was driven from bed by the insistent beeping of his mobile phone. But it wasn’t beeping for him to answer it, it was beeping for him to plug it in. Since that night, the assistant professor of physics at MIT, has been thinking about ways to start his phone charging as soon as he enters his home - without the need for plugs or wires.Jennifer Chu at Technology Review writes that Soljačić considered using radio waves, but found that most of their energy would be lost in transmission. Targeted methods like lasers require a clear line-of-sight and could be dangerous for anything in their way. According to Chu, he eventually settled on a phenomenon called magnetic resonance coupling, in which two objects tuned to the same frequency exchange energy strongly but interact only weakly with other objects.
“A classic example is a set of wine glasses, each filled to a different level so that it vibrates at a different sound frequency. If a singer hits a pitch that matches the frequency of one glass, the glass might absorb so much acoustic energy that it will shatter; the other glasses remain unaffected.”
Now, Soljačić and his team have successfully demonstrated the use of magnetic resonance coupling to power a 60 watt light bulb from a distance of roughly two meters - and through a thin wall.
The most effective setup, thus far, transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. “While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent,” says Soljačić. “So realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application.”
While some wireless power technologies have emerged in the marketplace, Soljačić’s technique differs in that it might one day enable devices to recharge automatically, whenever they come within range of a wireless transmitter.
Not the same technology as Tesla but the same concept. The question is whether or not it is safe.
This idea is promising. But there are major hurdles to high efficiency. Simple logic shows that unless the transmitted power can’t be radiated away then it needs to be directional. Simple physics can show no radiation equals low frequency which means high loses. Sure you can set up, non practical, ideal conditions in a lab but thats not solving the problem. There are major hurdles to implementing this technology that I do not see addressed.
I strongly urge anyone who thinks Tesla had it all figured out to check the later patents (hell try and build the things and get them to work). Most Tesla fans only read his “popular” books like “the problem of increasing human energy”. The latter to researchers are a bit like Nostradamus’s prophecies. Sure he hits some right, but knew it all? Well only so far as Leonardo knew all about assembling helicopters.
This guy got his idea from watching ‘Southland Tales’
That’s right, directional is the key. There is a small company out of Sunnyvale, Ca called PowerBeam Inc. that is doing just that, they are using lasers to transmit wireless electricity and it’s for the reason’s stated by “An Honest Chap.” It is simply more practical.
This just encourages the incredibly wasteful, even pathological (in terms of our species) need for “more power” (and laziness too) whereby everyone wants it now and to hell with the cost. This wasteful use of power (70% efficiency???) just because some professor didn’t want to get off his butt and didn’t remember to plug in his device either is an idea that should go down as another reason the world hates us as wasteful, selfish, arrogant and lazy or as another reason we will have annihilated ourselves with countless frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.
I can think of a much simpler way to utilize this: A phone charger could be a small pad, similar to a mousepad, plugged into an electrical outlet- the top would be composed of the wireless power transmitter and a pressure sensor. When someone sets his phone onto the charging pad, the pressure sensor would turn on the power transmitter and begin charging the phone. When the phone is taken off the pad, the pressure sensor will automatically stop transmitting the power.
This would take care of problems such as poor transmission over long distances, others feeding from the power (the way people use insecure WiFi) and wasting unnecessary power.
Ya gotta do 90% eff over miles, not yards!! Tesla would tweak you!
Hey thats great! Too bad Tesla invented this in the early 20th century, but lost funding after they found out you can’t meter it, and he intended to make electricity available for everyone in the world for free. Wireless energy is nothing new, the idea of it has just been forgotten.
O really? Why didn’t they use tesla’s “invention” to meter it the local level with a receiver outside each house. Thus saving millions on power line loses and using almost the same scheme they use now. Rogue receivers could be made illegal and easily tracked down with a weak local transmitter (easily financed through the savings). Basically your talking crap, tesla ideas where good in his time but decades behind ours. If you don’t understand this you are in the same category. You can prove me wrong by making a fortune with this “forgotten” technology. Don’t give up the day job in the meantime.
look to the future cities of the world this technology can lead to pure electric transportation(cars, planes, ships… even a freakin segway) that would never need recharging and def. no pollutants to our already decaying atmospere