Tesla, is that you?
Tesla’s dream..................
Great idea, but, let’s hope Perry doesn’t push the self district button.
Dr. D in the new!
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...
Bitcoin is also able to do this
I thought Tesla was doing this stuff in the 1930’s.
8.6km is a little more than 5 miles.
Any longer than that the curvature of the Earth becomes a problem...........
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.
Sell copper, NOW!
—N. Pelosi
Geez - they finally figured out how to do it after Nikola Tesla did it more than a hundred years ago?!
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.
Wires seem to be almost entirely a male world, how many males are sick of always running the wires for everything, the stereos, the TVs, the computer stuff, how many times have most of us males standing knee deep in a pile of wires and different types of connectors, extension cords, and power strips, trying to hide them behind the couch or desk, or run them along the wall and keep track of them and untangle and separate this one to that device from that one to that device, prayed for when nothing needs wires again.
Whether it is powerlines during winter snows or setting up the wife’s office gadgets, or setting up the girlfriends new TV/Stereo system, men always get stuck with the wires, I’m sick of wires.
Hmmm. Maybe there will finally be a way to wirelessly charge an EV while driving. Just raise the car’s receptor like it’s a periscope. I think Cosmo Kramer envisioned something like this.
“”Can we forgo the copper cables now then?””
No. The testing was done in an uninhabited area. There’s a good reason why there were no humans “in the way” of that focused beam of light (tests at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range). What happens to humans if that beam hits them? I’m betting that DARPA isn’t at all concerned with the answer to that question. $$$ is the goal here. It is “Big Govt”, after all.
“This scientific experiment turns electricity into a tightly focused beam of light, sends that beam across open air, and then turns the light back into electricity at the far end.”
I can see the towers with the high tension wires and know enough to avoid them, but how to keep from getting cut apart by the highly-concentrated beam of light?
10% electricity to laser efficiency and 8% solar cell efficiency means 99% energy conversion loss. What you have, if you cool everything with water is a not very compact hot water heater. Otherwise you are just making hot air.
I do not think I want to live near the transmitting station, receiving station, or the path in between.
and EVs still suck
The beam will destroy anything in its path. If its path shifts just a bit it will roast things around it, like animals, houses and people.
Of course it will be controlled by AI, and the AI can mess up or be hacked, thus aiming the beam at animals, houses, people, skyscrapers, airplanes and cities.
Plus there is a loss of energy compared to transmission by wires.
That reminds me of a science fiction movie I saw as a child. Some ancient civilization had some sort of light beam they could play on enemies. Very scary to a child. I wonder how they will prevent this technology from being converted to such a weapon.