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Here's what I've been wondering. A transformer provides very efficient wireless power transmission but on a few centimeters. Has anyone considered scaling up a transformer? Would that increase the range? What if we made a house sized one and buried it under the house? Could that provide wireless electricity to the whole house?
At first I felt awful because I was thinking like part of the establishment: there's no way she came up with something that will replace power cords. I've got a degree in physics, and have always been interested in acoustics, and sound in air has some amazing properties, including the ability to transfer non-trivial amounts of power, especially at nodes, and especially when focused with, say, a parabolic reflector..…
Funny, I was thinking that most people with an engineering/physics background would dismiss the though that spurred her to investigate the matter in the first place ("why in this day and age should I plug my "wireless" device to charge it") as just absurd, and drop the issue without a second thought... Wireless power is something that has been researched for years I believe, the fact that to this day there is not a f…
Here's what I've been wondering. A transformer provides very efficient wireless power transmission but on a few centimeters. Has anyone considered scaling up a transformer? Would that increase the range? What if we made a house sized one and buried it under the house? Could that provide wireless electricity to the whole house?
It’s one thing to pull an idea out of your head and shape it into a prototype. But it’s a whole other thing to figure out how that device will get out of your test kitchen and into the marketplace. Hum... in this particular case, the problem is to make a prototype. If you have a working prototype for safe wireless energy transmission, no doubts that you'll find customers willing to buy it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, I was thinking that most people with an engineering/physics background would dismiss the though that spurred her to investigate the matter in the first place ("why in this day and age should I plug my "wireless" device to charge it") as just absurd, and drop the issue without a second thought... Wireless power is something that has been researched for years I believe, the fact that to this day there is not a f…
I've had the same thought she had - that we shouldn't necessarily need to plug stuff in to charge it. My preferred solution - not an original idea - is to find a way to free-ride off existing broadcast signals. Right now, the world is full of radio-frequency devices pumping energy into the air. Find a way to convert some of that energy - the energy of the strongest available broadcast source in your area, whatever it…
The amount of power needed would really depend on the device and the application, I guess.
How many mW are we talking about, in the best case scenario ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had the same thought she had - that we shouldn't necessarily need to plug stuff in to charge it. My preferred solution - not an original idea - is to find a way to free-ride off existing broadcast signals. Right now, the world is full of radio-frequency devices pumping energy into the air. Find a way to convert some of that energy - the energy of the strongest available broadcast source in your area, whatever it…
Yes, the radio solution is what I read about in the past. The amount of power needed would really depend on the device and the application, I guess. How many mW are we talking about, in the best case scenario ?
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4664/stealing...
One of the answers has the following math: For a large radio tower (100kW), you'd get roughly 80 W per square meter of receiving antenna area at 100m distance.
Since the typical distance to a nearby radio tower is probably more like 5 miles, we can reduce that to ~12mW for a 1m^2 antenna. For the size of a phone, we're talking more like 0.10mW, which is about 10,000 times less than a typical phone needs (assuming it was charging 24/7 with 100% efficiency).
Although, the answer gives the formula as 100kW/(4 * pi * r^2), which seems to give 0.80 W/m^2 instead of 80 W/m^2, so perhaps divide my other answers by 100 (and make that 1 million times lower than the power necessary to power a phone)
EDIT: I previously stated the formula gave the wrong units which was a mistake.
Most of us here are discussing the science of this thing. But let's just say that the science somehow miraculously works. Would any of you actually want to buy that big square thing and put it in your rooms? I can't imagine I would.
At first I felt awful because I was thinking like part of the establishment: there's no way she came up with something that will replace power cords. I've got a degree in physics, and have always been interested in acoustics, and sound in air has some amazing properties, including the ability to transfer non-trivial amounts of power, especially at nodes, and especially when focused with, say, a parabolic reflector..…
I think that the reason this new idea came from someone outside of Physics or Electrical Engineering is because its poor efficiency is obvious to people with a background in those fields. Sometimes it takes an outsider to challenge assumptions and achieve a breakthrough, but I don't think thats going to happen in this particular case.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_ha...
Paywall, can't get to the article.