WiTricty

[Mike Lucey]

WiTricty - Wireless Electricity Delivered Over Distance

http://www.witricity.com/

I've heard / read about it for a long time and now it looks like to could be a reality

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[remus]

Interesting article on it by the bbc: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8165928.stm

Modelhead, why are you afraid of magnets? are you also wary of going outside? (or am i missing the joke?)

[Rich O Brien]

Both very interesting articles and exciting developments. But implementing this new energy source would take time and people want things now these days.

If taken in baby steps, such as new mobiles, laptops, GPS systems etc all been fitted with the technology. Your house fitted with a wireless docking station to charge the current necessities to allow slow transition from wired to wireless. Eventually as you acquire newer TVs, Fridges etc, your wireless station is upgraded to cater for heavier electrical loading.

On a more greener note here something that's just around the corner and will have big impact to both households and environment

http://www.physorg.com/news136555635.html

[Dave R]

Nikola Tesla would like to see this.

Of course he wanted to send large amounts of power wirelessly over long distances.

[solo]

Very cool.

I remember many years ago watching a program called 'beyond 2000' on TV where they predicted this as well as electrical vehicles, they suggested that highways would have these wireless electrical gizmos in intervals so that your car could charge while driving , amazing how that seems to be a possibility now.

They did say that this would cause the medical profession to be forced to find an alternative to pacemakers however.

[MALAISE]

Wireless means the use of EM wawes. We do not really know what are the long time or threshold effects. Which range of frequencies will be used ?

MALAISE

[Dave R]

I wonder about the frequency, too. And what effect would these fields have on medical devices?

[HFM]

Cancer is a small price to pay for having no cables anywhere in your house! [ <-- sarcasm, take no offense please...]

[Alan Fraser]

Sounds pretty scary to me. Sending power to a Wii or phone is one thing, but can you imagine what fields would be zapping through you powering the microwave or tumbler-dryer?

[EscapeArtist]

@hfm said:

Cancer is a small price to pay for having no cables anywhere in your house! [ <-- sarcasm, take no offense please...]

So many new technologies that we haven't seen the long-term effects of yet. I know you're joking, but there is an element of truth to that.

In a way I feel that, even though it's pretty darn cool, this product is an invented necessity. What's the trouble with plugging things in? It seems like it would be wasteful to broadcast unused power in all directions, especially with all the concerns regarding the rise in need for energy and the rising cost of producing it.

Maybe I'm just becoming anti-change as I get older...

[tomasz]

There are other companies that provide similar solution:
[flash=560,340:2ddguob6]http://www.youtube.com/v/_iFqAYvJI2g[/flash:2ddguob6]

@dave r said:

Nikola Tesla would like to see this.

Tesla would like to see much more than that. What he has discovered was not an electricity that we all know.

Tesla's Hairpin Circuit - power yet to be understood and harnessed...
[flash=425,344:2ddguob6]http://www.youtube.com/v/XE5g6x6OOb0[/flash:2ddguob6]

[remus]

@alan fraser said:

Sounds pretty scary to me. Sending power to a Wii or phone is one thing, but can you imagine what fields would be zapping through you powering the microwave or tumbler-dryer?

I find it hard to imagine a situation like that occuring on a regular basis, as it would be extremely inefficient to power things with a high wattage over large distances.

[remus]

@escapeartist said:

In a way I feel that, even though it's pretty darn cool, this product is an invented necessity. What's the trouble with plugging things in? It seems like it would be wasteful to broadcast unused power in all directions, especially with all the concerns regarding the rise in need for energy and the rising cost of producing it.

Maybe I'm just becoming anti-change as I get older...

You could always turn it off...

[MALAISE]

What about heavy magnetic fields as far as inductiv circuits are concerned ?
When I was in the Airforces as Radar specialist, we could see Neon tubes lightning each time the Beam (fortunally far from us !) was crossing our shelter.....

I was also told that in the early 50's, in PARIS , a guy sold small lamps which didn't need any power supply. The trick was : theses lamps were shown under the Eiffel Tower, where a Radio-Emitter was in function. I let you imagine the end....

MALAISE

[Alan Fraser]

Yes, my point was that you can't do away with the present power socket setup for heavy duty static items, but certain things would be quite handy to go completely wireless. It would be useful to have laptops recharge as shown in Mike's original post...or have the cordless phone recharge wherever you left it lying around the house...or have all the audio-visual stuff like TV, DVD, satellite box etc, both power-up and talk to each other without the present birds nest of cabling.

[solo]

And like with all new technologies comes new social dilemmas and new ways to cheat the system.
I see power theft as a new problem, people squatting close to your home charging their devices off your grid.

[fefillo]

I was just thinking the same as Solo. Unlike wifi, I can't imagine how you would go about attaching some kind of authentication or security scheme to EM waves.

How do you keep your neighbor from buying a big coil/antenna and stealing your EM waves from you?

You could probably get away with stealing just a little bit from each one of your neighbors (just enough that they won't notice) and subsidizing your own power usage. That's what I would do! Can't be too greedy... just ~50% reduction in my power bill and I'd be happy.

Also, there's no way this can be more efficient than direct wired power, so you'd be adding additional inefficiencies and end up spending more power overall!

• Fefo

[Mike Lucey]

Fefo, I'll make a note never to live beside you

I think this technology has a ways to go before it becomes anything like common place but I can see it cutting construction costs substantially in time if it can be proven safe.

With regard to 'who pays for the energy?' question. Maybe in order for this technology to work some outside the box thinking would have to come into play. For to work it might be required that the end user machines would have to be computerised / linked to the network to show consumption? Now that would stump Fefo but would be a further invasion our our privacy, that is unless ultra efficient energy producing devices come into play that we could use in our back yards or integrated into our home fabric.

Mike