This technology is not interesting to me. The efficiency is too low, the coils are too big, the distances are too short, and too much alignment is required. The talk of replacing batteries is just hype.
But the real reason I'm not excited is I don't believe this technology is going to improve much. People look at this and think that it's just like computers, so in 10 years these things will be 10 times smaller with 10 times the range. That's simply not true; there's no Moore's law for wireless power. We've known how to do this for over 100 years and the basic physics aren't changing. In 10 years the coils will still be that big, with the same range and the same alignment issues.
Batteries, on the other hand, have plenty of room to improve. In 10 years batteries will definitely be storing more energy with less mass at lower cost with faster charging and longer lifetimes. That's a technology I can get excited about.
I can't tell you how happy I am that this didn't descend into a Nikola Tesla circle-jerk as it always does on reddit. I've tried to make your points before but it seems that many people on reddit can't accept that while Tesla may have been misunderstood in his time, we have come very far in our understanding of physics and, despite claims to the contrary, have produced at least a couple very bright and creative electrical engineers in the past 100 years.
This is so true of many industries, but we are easily blinded by so much rapid change that we assume it must be possible always and everywhere. I have no credibility to agree or disagree with the case in point, I just think it's an excellent point one to make.
Wireless doesn't necessarily mean remote. There are already power mats that charge a cell phone that's resting on it, without having to plug in the phone. I've even seen a prototype kitchen counter with a wireless blender - just set the blender on the counter and it gets power.
Countertops and appliances with this technology would be genuinely useful. Wires and plugs are only a hinderance on a kitchen countertop. I can see this introduced as a high-end luxury, then have it filter down into the mainstream. Tables and other furniture with this tech would be great. Step in the door and set your smartphone down on the stand, and it charges. Desks would be awesome. Laptop stands would be great too.
I can see what you are saying in terms of the fundamental forces. However I wonder if it is possible to dynamically 'focus' the power. That would make things possible with microprocessors that would have been too tedious to perform manually. Even then it isn't that great if you need to install some massive device.
While this might be true for larger everyday objects, I think there are some real advantages in extremely small scale technologies that may not even be able to carry a battery.
There is no Moore's law for the DNA sequencing either.
But yet, DNA sequencing saw an exponential growth as time went on. I read somewhere (forgot the source) that 20% of the genome sequencing was done in the first 10 years. 80% was done in the next 5 years.
HIV took 15 years to be sequenced. SARS took 31 days.
So - even though Moore's law isn't valid, no industry stays stagnant. Exponential optimization will occur - even with wireless electricity. At least with the size and the range issues.
The alignment issues - I don't know how they'll deal with that.
I disagree with you. Moores law applies to DNA sequencing very much because it is subject to the same kind of improvements that have benefited the semiconductor industry to date.
Some of these benefits are direct (such as analyzers on a chip), some of them are indirect (such as using more powerful computers to do the analysis faster).
I think nobody can really say if it is safe or not. Animals are sensitive to magnetism - they can "see" where the north is. So it is not like magnetism doesn't have effect on us. And saying that it is just like Earth's magnetic field is downright wrong - that field doesn't have a MHz frequency and it is nowhere near that strong.
Besides with sufficiently high powered magnetic field everything becomes magnetic http://www.hfml.ru.nl/froglev.html
I think the trick for now is to strategically position charging stations in common areas (desk, bedroom table, kitchen, etc.). Also, it looks like alignment is required, so it's not quite like the wireless router in your home reaching all of the rooms, more like your TV remote reaching the TV set.
Right. I'm nowhere near an expert in this but I would guess that the receiver has to be orthogonal to the planar field lines (parallel to the rectangular transmitter). Mostly that's a guess though because I'm not sure I understand how the magnetic resonance works, however he does seem careful to place the devices in that alignment.
Resonant energy transfer has been known for a very long time. Any electrical system that has inductance or capacitance (which means all electrical systems) will have a resonance point. This resonance point is the like the resonance point of a mass spring system or like resonance of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. If you drive a system at its resonance point, you will maximize the energy transfer into the system. That is all that is going on. If both the send and receive coils resonate at the same frequency, maximum power transfer can occur. There is no magic. This isn't a technology.
Also, the coils do indeed have to be parallel to each other. Fields gradients are function as vectors in space and the receive coil must be positioned to "capture" as many field lines as possible emitted from the transmitter.
OK, thanks. That's what it sounded like but his description was low on the details so I figured I wouldn't make that stretch. Anyway, yes, my guess was mostly based on Maxwell and a little vector calc (physics minor, nothing more) but it seemed to make sense.
Because it's not enough to have so much contamination, smoking, diesel particles, polymer additives, pesticides, nuclear waste,mercury fillings, let's add even more.
Because you are too lazy to make a hole for your TV once in your lifetime, you add something that radiates 50% of their energy out there. YES, it's radiation, no matter what this pseudo scientist say(don't try to fool ignorant people), it's an electromagnetic wave, it is not static = radiation. This energy are photons of big wavelength.
1mW-3miliWatts laser light could be dangerous, let's put 50-400Watts(look at TVset specs)and radiate 100-800Watts out there(2·10^5 times more energy). What could go wrong??
Just do it, profit and if people get cancer, it's very difficult to prove.
For the people that says that this can't resonate with cells and so on, look at the size of your brain, is that an electrical system? could it be affected in any way , look at your spinal cord, your testicles-ovaries(the size of the cell phone)...
Don't get me wrong, People here are young and healthy, but I have seen people die very very bad from cancer - leukaemia after working near telecom towers(20 from 40 got cancer, the company make an statistic using the total company workers "diluting" it and saying that it's an statistic atypical, that it has nothing to do with their work). When my father worked in chemical industry as a chemist, when all the workers in one place lost their teeth they(the company) said that surely the workers got a venereal disease or something their fault.
If someone dies or is affected from this thing, they are going to say: hey, it can't be our system.
I don't care about people using this on their own taking responsibility, I care about people using it near me, or my family(neighbours), invading my airspace and polluting it.I care about systems capable of radiating 40KWatts for powering electric trucks (hey, it's safe!!) on public roads and I don't want it. Let me chose.
YES, it's radiation, no matter what this pseudo scientist say(don't try to fool ignorant people), it's an electromagnetic wave, it is not static = radiation.
When you can explain the terms in this simple equation:
E = hv
... we'll all be interested in your opinion on this subject.
The earth magnetism is static, it doesn't change in practical terms(in a window of a second), neither periodic or not.
To hear someone tell: this is like the earth magnetism, this is not radiation, is trying to fool people, I'm sorry but I feel very upset about it. If they use let's say 50Herzs, they are emiting photons, not in the visible range, but they are photons anyway, but they are not going to use 50Hz, they will use MHz and more, and that could resonate with proteins and destroy it.
There are millions of proteins out there with different sizes, and shapes, to probe that one of them is destroyed by this this is impossible, but given the right size and the right frequency it will happen because everything has their characteristic frequency.
The same way when you put water in the microwave oven it heats up because it has absorbed the energy and translated it to mechanical energy because of the characteristic frequency of the water. With lower frequencies than mw oven you are going to resonate with bigger structures than water, water is small compared with proteins that could be thousands or millions of times bigger.
Do you mean that the energy that carries each photon is quantized (when the energy state of the excited atom is quantized in orbitals) and is inverse proportional to the wave length?
¿That is not radiation because it bounces a lot and don't penetrate?
If you use a lot more photons, you will have a very different effect that a single one.
Also, if you start making this devices, you will make it smaller and smaller and use less L on the inductances because it's more efficient, and that means use bigger frequencies, even microwaves( I heard they were using far radio in the first experiment), that are going to resonate with molecules bonds like ADN and stuff.
But the real reason I'm not excited is I don't believe this technology is going to improve much. People look at this and think that it's just like computers, so in 10 years these things will be 10 times smaller with 10 times the range. That's simply not true; there's no Moore's law for wireless power. We've known how to do this for over 100 years and the basic physics aren't changing. In 10 years the coils will still be that big, with the same range and the same alignment issues.
Batteries, on the other hand, have plenty of room to improve. In 10 years batteries will definitely be storing more energy with less mass at lower cost with faster charging and longer lifetimes. That's a technology I can get excited about.