Posted on 09/02/2009 12:13:23 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Electronics such as phones and laptops may start shedding their power cords within a year.
Wireless electricity may soon make tangled power cords a thing of the past.
That's the prediction of Eric Giler, CEO of WiTricity, a company that's able to power light bulbs using wireless electricity that travels several feet from a power socket.
WiTricity's version of wireless electricity -- which converts power into a magnetic field and sends it sailing through the air at a particular frequency -- still needs to be refined a bit, he said, but should be commercially available soon.
Giler, whose company is a spinoff of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research group, says wireless electricity has the potential to cut the need for power cords and throw-away batteries.
"Five years from now, this will seem completely normal," he said.
"The biggest effect of wireless power is attacking that huge energy wasting that goes on where people buy disposable batteries," he said. Watch Giler demonstrate the idea
It also will make electric cars more attractive to consumers, he said, because they will be able to power up their vehicles simply by driving into a garage that's fitted with a wireless power mat.
Electric cars are "absolutely gorgeous," he added, "but does anyone really want to plug them in?"
Ideas about wireless electricity have been floating around the world of technology for more than a century. Nikola Tesla started toying with the ability to send electricity through the air in the 1890s. Since then, though, making wireless electricity technology safe and cheap enough to put on the market has been an arduous task for researchers.
Engineers have developed several ways to convert electricity into something that's safe to send through the air without a wire. Some of their technologies are available on commercial scales,
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
As if that's the reason no one wants an electric car.
Sorry, I don’t think this will be nearly as widespread as they are talking. Any application over a few amps would raise safety issues (and even less), and EM fields are associated with dozens of medical maladies. High voltage linemen have several times the normal rate of cancer, for instance.
Whenever someone turns on a light, I’ll piss down my leg and forget who I am for half an hour.
Wasn’t this Tesla’s idea ~100 years ago?
Ideas about wireless electricity have been floating around the world of technology for more than a century. Nikola Tesla started toying with the ability to send electricity through the air in the 1890s. Since then, though, making wireless electricity technology safe and cheap enough to put on the market has been an arduous task for researchers.I should learn to finish reading first.
I call BS re the electric car angle.
The amount they can transmit safely is going to be very small (think milliwats). That’s nowhere near what an electric car would need to charge overnight.
Best case might low power electronics (cellphones, iPods, etc.).
Think of the old street cars that had a pole that connected to a powerline overhead.
I can see some applications that would be interesting.
Of course it comes back to who is going to pay for it. And how much energy is lost in the converstion from electical to magnetic back to electical.
Oh I forgot, it doesn’t matter because electricity is free.
Wireless power causes cancer.
As someone who is employed to sell and maintain nuclear power plants, I applaud the cordless power source and the electric car for the increased power demands that they will bring.
Wireless power transfer by induction, good; power line radiation, bad. Hmmmmm...
Yup.
Shades of Nikola Tesla >
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
“Tesla demonstrated “the transmission of electrical energy without wires” that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891. The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is a term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor).”
—
There were some unusual weather side effect to his experiments.
“Whenever someone turns on a light, I’ll piss down my leg and forget who I am for half an hour.”
Thank you. I nearly died laughing at this comment :-).
So, how do they track the electricity consumed in the house? How do you get billed for use? Is this akin to leaving the faucet running and then filling your glass as you need it?
Gasoline cars are "absolutely gorgeous," he added, "but does anyone really want to insert a gasoline hose?"
So instead of a hose, we'll just have the driver open up the filler cap and splash buckets of gasoline in the general direction. Enough will get into the gas tank to allow you to drive.
Atomic energy was promised to be energy too cheap to bother metering. We see how that turned out.
Old?
Let’s reconvene this discussion on Sept 2, 2010.
within a year.
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