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Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

venturebeat.com

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Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#41

Post by samstave »

agumonkey wrote: post #17
adevine wrote: post #15

My understanding, though, is that all of these wireless charging solutions are significantly less efficient that wired power. Even if it's, say, 10% less efficient, that's a huge, huge waste of energy on a large scale if this technology becomes popular.

Depends, how much energy is used in making cables that break, get lost ? Even though building the wireless adapter endpoints will also be costly ... hmm

Also, count how many failed/shitty cables you have had in your history- I've had literally hundreds of cables for charging only purposes. Fuck all that plastic and material waste when the cable only lasts N months...

Further, it pisses me off that every device has a diff charging interface. Fine, go ahead and have a diff data delivery cable for high speed file trans but fuck you to every manufacturer where the charging interface is unique...

I'm looking at you every laptop manufacturer ever...

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#42

Post by eridius »

adevine wrote: post #15

My understanding, though, is that all of these wireless charging solutions are significantly less efficient that wired power. Even if it's, say, 10% less efficient, that's a huge, huge waste of energy on a large scale if this technology becomes popular.

Induction charging is definitely less effective, and loses a lot of energy to waste heat. This is why, when you take an Apple Watch off of its charger, the back is very warm.

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#43

Post by samstave »

g52oevr0in wrote: post #40
duaneb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it not be absorbed by proportional savings in heating?

This is true only if your home is running an electric heater. Burning hydrocarbons like natural gas, oil, and wood to heat your home directly is more efficient than using them to run a turbine to generate electricity, then run that electricity many miles to your home, then turn it into heat.

Teleporting heat. Got it.

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#44

Post by dantiberian »

Paul Reynolds, who worked at uBeam, demolishes Energous planned business model through physics [1] [2]. My opinion (and a lot of other investors) is that Energous is a scam [3] [4]. Their device cannot get FCC approval to transmit at the levels that they need to to send power, so it's a complete non-starter.

[1]: http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-other-g...

[2]: http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/those-other-g...

[3]: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3964405-wattup-mini-will-sav...

[4]: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3960298-stunning-admission-e...

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#45

Post by gumby »

mariojv wrote: post #34

This way they can remove the only plug on the new iPhones. :)

I don't know why you added the smiley. Given that the watch uses inductive charging I expect their endgame is indeed to eliminate all the connectors. They can't do that though until there's a reasonable infrastructure of wireless headsets and people comfortable with using them as their default headset.

Having the watch as a primary interface will certainly need this capability.

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#46

Post by mikeyouse »

comex wrote: post #21
adevine wrote: post #15

My understanding, though, is that all of these wireless charging solutions are significantly less efficient that wired power. Even if it's, say, 10% less efficient, that's a huge, huge waste of energy on a large scale if this technology becomes popular.

Waste is relative. A smartphone uses around 1% the electricity per year of a refrigerator; I don't know if upping that even to, say, 10% would make all that much difference in the grand scheme of things.

Because I'm slow at work..

If we say the new generation iPhones have a 3,000mah battery, batteries are charged fully once per day, and that 100 million people in the US have iPhones:

3,000mah x 3.8v = 11.4 watt-hours to fully charge a phone -- at $0.15/kWh, this equates to a daily expense of ~$0.002 to charge your phone. Annually, this is $0.62. If wireless charging were 50% efficient, it would still cost under a dollar annually to charge your phone.

On a bigger scale:

11.4Wh * 365 days * 100M phones = 416 billion watt-hours annually to charge all the iPhones in the US. A 50% efficiency loss would equate to a difference of 208 billion Wh.

Enercon makes a monster wind turbine called the E-126 that has a 7.6mW generator attached. With a modest 40% capacity factor, you would only need 8 additional wind turbines to make up for every iPhone user in the US switching to wireless charging.

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#47

Post by oh_sigh »

givinguflac wrote: post #37
mariojv wrote: post #34

This way they can remove the only plug on the new iPhones. :)

Honestly I'm fine with that if it means never having to plug my device in again. "The signals can travel up to 15 feet, and up to 12 devices can be charged at once." Sounds amazing.

You know what also sounds amazing? Signals that can travel up to 15 miles and up to 1 million devices charged at once.

Re: Apple is working with Energous on wireless charging

#49

Post by lj3 »

seanalltogether wrote: post #19

My favorite is still the cradle with contact pins that were on the original nexus one phones, no need to plug anything in, no need to align with magnetic grippers, just drop it in the cradle and it worked. Why did that ever go away?

Protective covers. Most are too thick to work with a cradle designed for a naked phone. Making a cradle with an adjustable width and depth is, apparently, either too difficult or too expensive.
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