MIT Demonstrates Wireless Power Transfer

Breakthrough? This is 100 year old technology invented by Nikola Tesla. Here's a good intro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

Perhaps the joke is on me and this is one of those urban legend emails.

 

breakthrough? i have this technology on my cordless toothbrush!

and correct me if im wrong, but doesnt the creation of an electromagnetic field, big enough to cover an entire room, nessitate a radiative field? not to mention a field strength powerfull enough to run a laptop would probably wipe the hard drive of any information you wanted to put on it?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Magnus1 @ Jun 9 2007, 03:54 AM) [snapback]458582[/snapback]</div>

I haven't read their "report", but I suspect that like the electric toothbrush (Sonicare IIRC) even though not connected, the parts have to be closely coupled. Otherwise you are going to have large loses. It would be nice to have a "wireless" connection to your PHEV that would just pull loose when you start to back out. BTW, my toothbrush is at least 10 years old, and still working well.

Dave M.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dmckinstry @ Jun 9 2007, 07:00 AM) [snapback]458621[/snapback]</div>

That's right. The cordless toothbrush works like the charging paddles on some electric vehicles. This is done with induction coils. They have a weak field and must be very close to each other. The MIT work is with magnetically-coupled, resonant coils. Much greater distances are possible due to vastly greater efficiencies (a million times according to MIT). This was Tesla's vision a century ago. He believed there was no need for wires to transmit power and worked extensively with resonant coils.

If they can also piggyback WiFi on this I would be in heaven. I'd love to get rid of the wires and seven power bricks I have under my desk.

 

wireless is where its at. if you have stock in landline phone companies, dump em before its too late. my wireless provider Verizon Wireless supports its landline father Verizon Communications bigtime.

in fact, Vodaphone owns a huge chunk of Verizon Wireless and Verizon Comm wanted to buy it, but couldnt because it simply made Vodaphone too much money.

right now wireless has a lot of hurdles to conquer to truly dominate. bandwidth issues will be much lesser an issue when analog cellphone frequencies are retired in 8 months. a year after that, analog TV is going away. that will clear up a lot of airwaves and i think the quality and capability for any wireless product will take a huge jump so innovation in the wireless area is the place to be, any breakthrough will provide monster returns...

 

What do phone companies have to do with power transmission? By all accounts cell phones should have made landlines obsolete, yet they still are here...

Either way interest bit with the coils, I was thinking "Umm this sounds like what a transformer does..." but a transformer won't work beyond an inch or so (depending upon the size of course).

I wonder if these fields will react with anything else in the surrounding space though, I'd hate to have my magnetically "plugged in" lap top computer running only to find out my harddrive is wiped clean due to the field, or my credit cards no longer work.

 

Old, new, whatever.

I heard about this on the radio and think its a bad idea. Why? Because there is a loss of power/energy between the source and the destination. No amount of improvement in focus or whatever is going to eliminate loss.

That means wasteful.

Do we really need more waste just for convenience? Haven't we been wasteful enough in the name of convenience and laziness?

Maybe people should plug their cell phone IN to recharge. Wireless recharging is NOT the direction we should be going in.

 

Hear, hear!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MikeSF @ Jun 9 2007, 10:03 AM) [snapback]458716[/snapback]</div>

hmm...well...maybe it does, maybe it doesnt.


as far as making any technology obsolete, only laws, regulations and big business can do that.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Jun 9 2007, 10:19 AM) [snapback]458720[/snapback]</div>

Not necessarily so. There is a lot of loss using power bricks. If this eliminated their need, say with a universal 24v transmission, then there could be a net savings, both environmentally (a lot less manufacturing and wires), and energy loss. Imagine this in your Prius instead of wires, that could reduce a lot of copper and potentially, the price of the vehicle.

 

Oh yes…One coil under my desk and the laptop, with another coil, on top of it.
After an hour or so I can get up from my chair and identify my two “over well & crispyâ€, no thanks.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(The Annoying One @ Jun 9 2007, 06:33 PM) [snapback]458926[/snapback]</div>

Whoa, I've never met someone with built-in magnetic-close coupled resonant butt coils. Congratualtions!!

 

Lame, very lame.
Every physicist who lived since Tesla knows this phenomenon, and knows that in theory it can be used to transfer electric energy. The keyword is "in theory". The big challenge is to make it practical. And, judging from the article and picture, they didn't manage any breakthrough in that respect.

 

It was certainly an interesting idea when Tesla came up with it, but didn't we learn about the practical limitations then? I think if it was a successful and practical idea, we would have developed it a bit more in the intervening 100 years. On the other hand, now that certain devices can operate with very small amounts of power, even a lossy power transmission system might be realistic, although pretty limited in its application.

Oh yeah...and has anyone tried operating a radio receiver anywhere in the vicinity?

- Doug

 

Well I was thinking more along the lines of, if everyone inside of, lets say, NYC had these, then you could drive down the streets in electric cars while having them being charged the whole time. That's a cool thought. It's one way to solve the range problem of the electric cars, simply have them being charged up while they are running.

Getting rid of wires would be very nice in certain situations, namely when there are tons of cords strictly for power. I don't see this becoming the dominant way to move power though.

BTW, VERY VERY old news. Telsa did this well over 50 years ago.