Intel Demonstrates New Wireless Power Technology

75% efficiency is amazing for wireless power. But just like the last wireless power technology, the issue is where the other 25% power goes. You don’t want to be cooked just because you’re charging a cell phone.

(Note: I’m serious about the concern, but I recognize that the energy is most likely not being radiated in any form dangerous to a person. Your electric stove is 5% efficient, it radiates 95% of its energy as heat which we use to cook!)

“The technology demonstrated comprised of two metal arrays”

I think you mean T”he technology demonstrated comprised two metal arrays”

I’m going to have to disagree with you, ‘Shawn Pitman,’ if that IS your real name. The fact that electric stoves’ heating coils capitalize on the resistance makes them *efficient* not inefficient.

shawn pitman

wouldn’t your stove be 95% efficient, the 5% is whats nto being used, the 95% is heat, but thats what the stove is supposed to do, its not waste.

Am I the only one bothered that this “new” power technology was invented about 100 years ago by Nikola Tesla and if it was fully utilized today it could be powering the entire world? Who cares about a stinking cell phone. How about your car?

This is amazing. I want to see this in my house, giant coils and all!!

Bring out the Tesla Coils!

Big deal… Tesla demonstrated this first almost a hundred years ago.

Tesla demonstrated a working version of wireless electricity well over 50 years ago, this concept is far from new. This only gives power over 2 feet, tesla worked to give wireless electricity over an entire town or city.

umm well tesla did demonstrate this about a hundred years ago with about 10% efficiency and a 100 ft. range. I can see this working as a mat you put on a table and just set all your gadgets on it to charge because that would be very high efficiency. But as for cars the efficiency would be very low. I could see it happening if it was built in underneath parking spots to charge your electric car or give it a boost along the way but to power it in real time would require about 100 amps continuously assuming you used capacitors for acceleration. I know this because I built and drive an electric car every day so I’m somewhat of an expert. Just don’t expect to see this added on to your nearest cell tower to power your cell phone any time soon.

Man.. Nikola Tesla invented this shit in the 1920′s and got shoot down by Edison for it cuz there was no $$ in it. Free energy for everyone.

Blaa blaa..

I’m not a Tesla expert, so somebody please correct me if I’m wrong.
The big difference between this experiment and Tesla’s work is that this is transmitting power via an electromagnetic field. From what I’ve learned about Tesla, he wanted to transmit power via electrostatic discharge.
Once again, I’m no expert so disregard this or flame me if I’m incorrect.

I think the short range version of power is going to be more commercially palatable than Tesla’s city-wide (or even planet-wide) distribution.

Anyway I remember reading about this in the mid 90′s: special “mats” that you would drop your cell or PDA onto and they would then draw power. Another technique was wall-mounted lasers scanning and then beaming high intensity power into photoelectrics.

what this reminds me of is “contact less” electrical induction. what seems to be going on here is that AC current is running through the coils. This is actually more of a common practice that most people realize. It uses one electrically charged coil to inductively make another coil electrically charged.

Some of the best examples of this are RFID chips in some ID cards and wireless door keys. my electric toothbrush uses this technology to charge it’s batteries without actually having metal contacts on it’s charger, making it much safer to work around water.

This is a much larger concept. Probably able to induct more current than anything ever attempted before.

This is however not tesla’s wireless power transmitter. telsa’s method was much closer to what we use for radio transmitters. Radio transmitters can actually transmit as much as 100Kw of signal…the main difference is that there is sound encapsulated or modulated into that power. Unfortunately radio antenna designs aren’t designed to deliver large amounts of electricity to large amounts of users. although it is powerful enough to power foxhole radios.

Tesla invented wireless power but it wasn’t safe. It was in a form of radiation. Even this type is probably unsafe to be between. MIT did something safer but still not practical, which was transfering it by means of magnetism, which wouldn’t hurt people but still dagerous for electronics to some degree. Truthfully I don’t think power can ever be done wirelessly safely. There’s no way to funnel it by air that would guarantee it would not go through a person. I think there might be hope in transmitting it by magnetism, or maybe by sound outside of hearing frequency, but not in unlimited amounts. At some point it becomes dangerous for life or electronics.

-Colin-

Patents expire 70 years after the inventors death. Well at least that is what happens if a current patent is issued. Same with copyrights.

Michael, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you know what “radiation” is? Light is a form of radiation. So are radio waves. There is an untold amount of background radiation from various EM sources, both natural and not, passing through your body right now. And it’s completely safe.

The kind of radiation that’s “bad,” i.e. nuclear radiation, is called ionizing radiation. RF and EM are non-ionizing. The only way standing between that thing is dangerous is the field is powerful enough to sufficiently heat up your body that you cook. That’s how microwaves work. It would actually be completely safe to stand inside a giant microwave, as long as the power wasn’t high enough to significantly raise your body temperature.

“I think there might be hope in transmitting it by magnetism” magnetic fields are a form of radiation. Uh durr.

Also, sound is not a part of the EM spectrum, it’s simply pressure waves in the air. You can’t transmit anything but a tiny amount of power through sound.

Just like Tesla. this technology is about a century old.

I think this is great technology, but its hard to see it fitting into our every day lives in the next couple of years. That is even to say if they have perfected this kind of power transfer process by then.

Sure will be cool when we can wirelessly charge our gadgets though!

Press Release: “…power is then transmitted from one metal array to the other . . . transferring 60 watts of power over a distance of two feet.”

Blog Author: “…I am sure it wont be more than a few years before we see a usable version of this technology in everyday electronic devices.”

WTF?

The “metal arrays” are called antennas and are currently used to transfer kilowatts of power.

We call it radio.

The press release was about transmitting radio power EFFICIENTLY, not about transmitting electricity.

Power (watts) is not electricity.

When electricity is “transmitted” through the air it is called a spark.

… read a book.