Goodbye to copper worldwide—DARPA manages to transmit electricity remotely without wires thanks to the “POWER” program

El Adelantado ^ | 4/9/25 | Raquel

[Eleutheria5]

Now if only they use fossil fuels to generate the electricity transmitted wirelessly, we could still have global warming! Yay!

[nickcarraway]

Tesla, is that you?

[Red Badger]

Tesla’s dream..................

[Conan the Librarian]

Great idea, but, let’s hope Perry doesn’t push the self district button.

Dr. D in the new!

[marktwain]

I can see a few applications. However, it is extremely inefficient.

It appears to be about 4% or less efficient. If you have lots of power, and need a little power some distance away...

[Rural_Michigan]

Bitcoin is also able to do this

[Vermont Lt]

I thought Tesla was doing this stuff in the 1930’s.

[Red Badger]

8.6km is a little more than 5 miles.

Any longer than that the curvature of the Earth becomes a problem...........

[Tell It Right]

Agreed. My first thought as well. And it’d be interesting years later to study cancer rates of people living near the receiving end.

[PGR88]

Much like Wi-Fi for power, it has a transmitter feeds a laser, the beam is steered and kept on target by tracking hardware, and a receiver (essentially a compact opening plus a mirror that redirects light onto rugged solar cells) converts photons into usable current.

The power needed to generate lasers is huge.

So it will be 100 units of power in, to get 1 unit of power at the other end. Great for military use in a remote location, not so useful for 100 million US homes.

[SaveFerris]

No wires?

“The Ultimate Computer,” did that on March 8, 1968

Wait maybe that was the 23rd century...

[teeman8r]

Sell copper, NOW!

—N. Pelosi

[teeman8r]

Falling Skies, a Spielberg series, had the alien power generator on the moon supplying the power to the alien war machine.

[philman_36]

POWER: Persistent Optical Wire
As envisioned, POWER’s final demonstration will employ relays integrated onto existing platforms to validate long-distance transmission from a ground-sourced laser through multiple airborne nodes and back down to a ground receiver. I don't see it coming onto the civilian market any time soon.

[SaveFerris]

(Any longer than that the curvature of the Earth becomes a problem...........)

I hear ya bro...

We had the same problem with Rosie O’Donnell

We were trying to put satellites
🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️🛰️ in orbit around her

[Skywise]

Geez - they finally figured out how to do it after Nikola Tesla did it more than a hundred years ago?!

[Skywise]

Yeah - but he never documented how he did it and the knowledge died with him.

[Skywise]

Can’t wait to get the M5 MacBook later this year just to say I have an M5!!

[Zathras]

Nothing new.
All the easy stuff has already been invented.
The real technical problems are going to be really tough to fix.
Many will be impossible.

[Vermont Lt]

Yeah…not very “scientific” to not keep notes. Ha Ha.