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Underground > Laboratory >

Wireless Power Transmission

10:09 / 11.10.07

I was reading about Tesla and I discovered these little snippets;

Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891...
Both Nikola Tesla and Hidetsugu Yagi attempted to devise systems for large scale wireless power transmission. Tesla succeeded, but his investors saw no way they could profit from it because the consumption could not be controlled for billing and so not only refused to fund construction of larger transmitters but had the existing ones dismantled.
link

So the technology was suppressed by corporate interests because it wasn't profitable. Sound familiar? (*cough*electric car*cough*)

I thought this stuff was a sci-fi staple, satellites beaming power to earth etc. but it turns out to be old school mad science that actually works. Here's a Wikipedia article, what do you think about wireless power? Practical? Useful? Dangerous? The future? Applications?

Here's a taster;
In the case of light, power can be transmitted by converting electricity into a laser beam that is then fired at a solar cell receiver. This is generally known as "power beaming". NASA has demonstrated flight of a lightweight model plane powered by a laser beam.

Sjaak at the Shoe Shop

13:46 / 11.10.07

Well, in essence sunlight is also a means of wireless power transmission. So in that sense plants are also wireless power receivers. Another reason why solar cells are so elegant.

Other existing applications are radio, microwaves, induction cooking etc. I never really read much about the subject, but I must say the various other technologies like the evanescent wave coupling sound interesting.

With regards to the suppression of technology, well, the same applies to some extent to solar energy. Maybe the word suppression is a bit extreme, but can't really blame them. I mean, if you're a company and can't control the source or have a marketable application there is not much economical point in continuing the research.

14:26 / 11.10.07

Maybe the word suppression is a bit extreme, but can't really blame them.

But they dismantled the existing ones. To prevent anyone using them. Because it was a threat to their profits. Isn't that exactly the same as buying up patents for hydrogen engines, lightweight high efficiency solar cells and all the other technologies which are blocked, in order to maintain profits from the oil & car industry?
I can understand not paying for research you can't use maybe, but it sounds more like the cotton barons outlawing hemp in the olden days to me.

16:02 / 11.10.07

Seems like Powercast, a player in the nascent wireless power transmission market are getting some investment, so perhaps the corporate barons have changed their minds?

But what about the environmental/health angle? People are already concerned about RF emissions from mobile/cell phone base stations and electricity pylons: so you'd hope to see some studies done before yet another potential source of electromagnetic pollution is widely deployed in homes and workplaces.

17:42 / 11.10.07

Have you seen The Prestige? There's a lovely scene in a field outside Tesla's lab filled with wireless light bulbs.

I know I posted something on here about a new take on wireless power - some German or Dutch researchers (I think) were working on a system for houses to generate/transmit power from something like a wireless router. You wouldn't need wires in the walls any more.

Ah - evanescent wave coupling is what that was called. And the fellow overseeing it is Croatian(!).

15:34 / 12.10.07

I think this has great applications in space. If you can reduce the mass of a probe, say, by reducing the amount of onboard fuel needed, you can massively increase it's efficiency. You could have an orbital array (like in the pic in the wikipedia article) beaming power to it while it's in-system until it's out of range, to get it up to speed, then an ion drive for manoeuvring and such.
You can also reduce the mass of asteroid mining drones, for example, using the beam to provide the power for smelting etc. Personally I prefer giant mirrors and solar power but this is cool too.