Posted on 11/19/2015 9:06:06 AM PST by bananaman22
The EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) bounce has kilowatts pointed at the moon, and tiny, tiny amounts coming back.
Lots of losses.
/johnny
We already have wireless power.
We call it Solar power.
Sure, you can use high energy magnetic fields that can be used to create power some distance away, or you can use microwave impulses or any number of things. You can even derive power from cellular signals, but the reason we still use copper and aluminum wire is to minimize the losses in transmission over great distances.
I ask people that advocate this all the time how will all those microwaves affect us? “We’ll be ok” is the short answer...
Is that a picture of John Galt?
“the wireless charging for the phone is a gimmick or cool tech toy”
I have this, and I view it as more than a gimmick. A previous phone became a paperweight one day, when I heard a subtle cracking sound while plugging in the charger. Its a weak spot that I don’t have to worry about anymore. I predict that in 2-3 years, all phones will have wireless charge only, so the phone manufacturers can eliminate a potential source of water into the phone.
Not unless another Tesla shows up on the scene.
His backers couldn’t figure out how to make money on wireless power transmission. If you can make it work how do you charge customers who in theory would just turn on their electrical device and pull the power from the air.
Governments at all levels have intense fetishes in maximizing the energy efficiency (minimizing losses) of our homes and autos, usually to the detriment of the consumer (vastly higher capital cost, higher maintenance costs, poor reliability, poor performance, early obsolescence). They will sink their regulatory hooks into wireless energy transmission before it gets launched because of inherent high losses and “health effects.”
You can charge some to keep you in business, but others will steal the power and you can't block them. You're right, not a good business model.
There are already companies making devices that convert wireless energy into power for small-powered devices. We're criss-crossed with energy from various electrical fields and transmissions. Some say it's frying our bodies, although it mostly affects people living under high-transmission towers. I think we'll see more wireless-powered devices as electronic circuitry gets smaller and more powerful. For the big stuff, forget it (at least for a couple decades).
It won't get "launched" for economics. I don't mean that it is 2 or 3 times more lossy than wired power transmission, I mean 10 times or much greater.
Would you be willing to pay 10 or 100 times more for your energy use?
Probably for the pennies it takes to charge a phone or tablet — sure. Charging my EV with many tens of kWh? No way. Probably not for the myriad battery chargers on a construction site, either.
“Economics” isn’t just the operating cost — it’s the old “total cost of ownership” which is capital, operating, life, and energy cost.
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