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Wireless Electricity Set to Power Village
freedommatters writes "The UK Sunday Times has a story today about how "Scientists have successfully applied the technology used in microwave ovens to beam electricity without the need for unsightly pylons and overhead cables." A prototype has illuminated a handful of light bulbs and they expect to be able to power a remote village within three years."
I can feel my brain warming already.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
It's a cool technology but if it's implemented there would be even more radiation for our brains to absorb.
Dr. David Carpenter, Dean at the School of Public Health, State University of New York believes it is likely that up to 30% of all childhood cancers come from exposure to EMFs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns "There is reason for concern" and advises prudent avoidance".
is obsolete.
I write code.
I wonder if there are risks of this? I mean, how long until their fish have 3 eyes, and children are born with 4 feet? :D
... oh well, as long as it's being tested on some small village and not me
Didn't Tesla already do this? He was just dubbed insane and hounded while others stole his ideas. Case in point: Marconi
In the beginning they called it lightning, now they call it Wireless Electricity!
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
I assume the microwave beam would have to be highly focused in order to work. What safegaurds are there to make sure nothing gets in the way of the beam?
(the article is unavailable without a $55 subscription, maybe it is spelled out in the article?)
If only he had more money to make it work.
Is a similar concept. Radiation from the sun converted into electricity.
He "believes that it is likely." That doesn't mean he had any empirical evidence whatsoever.
Repeated controlled studies have shown that there is no connection between power lines and cancers except in the sense that neighborhoods near power lines tend to be of poorer people who have a higher incidence of cancer due to lifestyles (i.e., they smoke a lot).
Call me an alarmist, but I want to see the 50-year health studies before I go to something this, er, extreme. I mean, it could be completely harmless, but it just *seems* like something so potentially fraught with problems that my instinct is to avoid it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
You can use this to access the story... username: slashdot password: slashdot I didn't register it, I just typed it in hoping it would work. :-P
Why aren't lines buried to be less obtrusive, better insulated, and non-problematic in ice storms?
Recently, in February, South Carolina, my home state, had a very bad ice storm. It was called "the worst on record". Why was it called that? It wasn't really the worst. Duke Power, our service provider, has failed to maintain the lines in there above ground condition. Lots of trees had grown through power even over and around some lines. Then there was the typical stupid driver who ran into a number of poles all over the area.
I was without power for 4 days. Luckily, I had an UPS unit from a server that has 40 hours and I use a laptop as my main computer. It powered everything in my place including a small heater for a while.
To be on topic, eventhough the above is too: I don't think we should be pushing conventional power to 3rd world countries. With this implementation of "beaming power" - power still has to be generated at a plant with with most likely a non renewable resource. Why can't we give these same people advanced windmills and solar cells? (Then teach them maintenance) That makes so much more sense. I see the costs of even an experiment; very high. Also, I think Microwaves at a ground level would interfere with radio communications at the points below the transmission.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Tesla was pushing "broadcast power". It was doomed to failure because of the problems inherent in charging the atmosphere. What they are proposing here is quite different. Haven't read the article, but I'm slightly familiar with the concept here. You simply convert electricity into microwave radiation and transmit it in a tight beam to a receiving station. No problem, old hat. Doing it on this scale might be a challenge, though. On the other end you have a receiver that converts that radiation back to usable electricity. Quite a different problem. I suspect that's what they're pioneering here. I think it has actually been done before, but not in any practical way. Powering a few lightbulbs isn't exactly practical either, but it would be if you could power a small town, or even just several buildings.
But keep out of the way of the beam!! I have to wonder about the environmental damage of birds/insects flying through it and getting cooked.
I remember reading about a proposal to send power to the earth this way. By having a massive solar cell array in space transmitting microwaves to a giant receiver on earth, you could gather lots of energy. The thought of this thing getting off track and aiming at, say, NYC seems a little too scary, though.
"Microwaves for the electricity are targeted via antennas and reflectors at a ?rectenna? (from the words rectifier and antenna), "
;-)
I'm glad they defined a rectenna for me...I thought it was an antenna you stuck up your ass!
-psy
This is a more detailed publication pdf file
Five, Four, Three, Two, One....
Instead of having plentiful places for birds to rest in urbanized areas, we get partially cooked ones occasionally falling from the sky! Allright, not really - but it would be oddly funny to see a bird or insect perch in one area up high, enjoying unexpected warmth, then suddenly move away due to sudden discomfort or unexpected smell.
I can't imagine that microwaves would end up anywhere near as efficient as wire transmission, but it is a nice idea for when you have a source of energy you otherwise couldn't capitalize on (like extra-planetory solar radiation in the recent Sim City games), and just want to siphon as much in a direction where you can't use more efficent methods.
Ryan Fenton
Electricity can be beamed through the air without a pylon in sight
Roger Dobson
SCIENTISTS have successfully applied the technology used in microwave ovens to beam electricity without the need for unsightly pylons and overhead cables.
The power is fired through the air in the form of microwaves and collected in special antennas that reconvert the microwaves into electricity.
A prototype of the wireless power technology has shown the system works and a full-scale version is now being built to make a remote village on the French-governed island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean the world's first microwave-powered community.
According to a report to be published this week, the system is a cheaper way than either solar energy or local generators of supplying remote areas not connected to a grid.
"(Electricity) network distribution is effective at the centre but the costs increase quickly when you get to the edge," said Dr Guy Pignolet of CNES, the French space agency, which has conducted the trials.
"Extending it to remote areas is very costly, but with microwave technology you do not have those costs. You also do not have pylons, which you may not want in sensitive areas."
The technology works by converting direct current (DC) electricity into microwave power at the transmitting end in the same way that switching on a microwave oven converts electricity into waves using a device called a magnetron. Residents are unlikely to be baked as the frequencies in the two applications are entirely different.
Microwaves for the electricity are targeted via antennas and reflectors at a "rectenna" (from the words rectifier and antenna), which absorbs the microwave energy from the beam and converts it back into DC power with diodes.
In Grand-Bassin on Réunion, which lies at the bottom of a 3,000ft canyon with no road access, electricity is currently provided by solar panels placed on the roofs of the houses. But increasing the amount of electricity solely by using the panels is difficult because of the amount of surface area needed. It is also expensive.
The researchers have successfully produced a field prototype to illuminate a handful of light bulbs. A second prototype is being finalised and will be in operation in about 10 months, while the whole project to supply the village with power is scheduled to be completed within three years.
Additional reporting: Nick Speed
Microwave power stations were great, until the beam lost its tracking slightly, sending it on a spectacular journey through your city.
But really, now that I think of it, I should have told them that it would have worked if they'd implemented RFC 3251 over 802.11! ;)
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Nice to see the wheel re-invented, again.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
C'mon, Sim City has had this for years...
What we need is not another way to get energy from power plants to towns and houses but small clean power generators in every buiding.
Then again, the oil lobby blocked every innovation for cars, so this is not gonna happen soon.
(And that comment was NOT a flamebait, just my opinion)
Tesla would be proud, but baffled they weren't doing it his way. I still like the stories of Tesla scaring the shit out of his neighbors by creating simulated earthquakes and lightening storms for miles around... one of the few reasons I'd love to have visited the 1800's for a short while.
;-)
BTW folks - all microwaves aren't bad. Just the resonant frequencies of water molecules that are bad news. Filter those out and anything that might produce them by multiplication and life is pretty safe. Well at least it seems ok to me - I haven't fried underneath those microwave towers on the hills when we hike yet. (Yet
Well, the server appears to be down, but it a most Slashdot way, I'd like to comment on the article without even having read it!
Nikola Tesla himself was known for doing stuff like this . But I don't believe the 95% efficiency for a second...You can't even get that though wires if they are long enough.
Practically, "Wireless Electricity" already exists; it's called radio. The difference is only a very tiny current is induced in an antenna, whereas these folks in the article are trying to power a light bulb.
The biggest problem with trying to do this is that electromagnetic waves drop off very, very rapidly as they propagate through space, and to counter this you need a huge generator. If you had such a thing you'd need to direct beam it to this village and you can bet the stream would barbeque everything in its path. Also, radio waves are not lasers...It is very difficult to control where they go, so you could expect a certain spread as it propagated form the power source. I would bet that a lot of the people in the source, destination, and everything in between would be exposed to these amounts of insane EM radiation constantly, and that can't be good.
In short, my take on it is that while this has a certain coolness factor, it's way too impractical. If they don't want to mess with running wire, they should just construct a fuel cell generator and leave them with a hell of a lot of hydrogen. And they can do this now, not wait three years.
-R
That much power focused into a beam will probably be enough to boil water. It'll be interesting to see if this has any side-effects during a rain shower!
Maybe we'll have the 'beams of steam' going across the various valleys in France!
Electricity can be beamed through the air without a pylon in sight
Roger Dobson
SCIENTISTS have successfully applied the technology used in microwave ovens to beam electricity without the need for unsightly pylons and overhead cables.
The power is fired through the air in the form of microwaves and collected in special antennas that reconvert the microwaves into electricity.
A prototype of the wireless power technology has shown the system works and a full-scale version is now being built to make a remote village on the French-governed island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean the world's first microwave-powered community.
According to a report to be published this week, the system is a cheaper way than either solar energy or local generators of supplying remote areas not connected to a grid.
"(Electricity) network distribution is effective at the centre but the costs increase quickly when you get to the edge," said Dr Guy Pignolet of CNES, the French space agency, which has conducted the trials.
"Extending it to remote areas is very costly, but with microwave technology you do not have those costs. You also do not have pylons, which you may not want in sensitive areas."
The technology works by converting direct current (DC) electricity into microwave power at the transmitting end in the same way that switching on a microwave oven converts electricity into waves using a device called a magnetron. Residents are unlikely to be baked as the frequencies in the two applications are entirely different.
Microwaves for the electricity are targeted via antennas and reflectors at a "rectenna" (from the words rectifier and antenna), which absorbs the microwave energy from the beam and converts it back into DC power with diodes.
In Grand-Bassin on Réunion, which lies at the bottom of a 3,000ft canyon with no road access, electricity is currently provided by solar panels placed on the roofs of the houses. But increasing the amount of electricity solely by using the panels is difficult because of the amount of surface area needed. It is also expensive.
The researchers have successfully produced a field prototype to illuminate a handful of light bulbs. A second prototype is being finalised and will be in operation in about 10 months, while the whole project to supply the village with power is scheduled to be completed within three years.
Additional reporting: Nick Speed
"The life and times of Nikola Tesla" ISBN 1-55972-329-7
Read that, it has all the information you need, and documented sources.
I have also seen examples of his coils in real life creating the effect of 'wireless power transfer'. Its simple high frequency air-core transformer theory really.. its not complex in our age.. it was totally amazing in his..
Figures you would post under anonymous, cant hide behind facts.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Tesla won the patent for radio because his plans included both a transmitter and receiver, while Marconi only had a transmitter. Transmit all you want but its worthless without a way to capture the transmissions.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
... but one day, he was proven correct.
Nikola invented wireless energy. This is Not News, but it is a Good Thing©.
I suggest you read Slashdot
login with slashdot/slashdot
Then post.
This isn't a case of general broadcast, it's point to point.
They also claim that, since it's different frequencies, that they "won't bake the residents." Though I'm not sure about it, I'd think anybody who actually is in the middle of such a project and says such a thing probably know's what they're talking about. (Though obviously spectacular exceptions exist.)
In any case, if they start baking residents, passersby or wildlife, I assume lawsuits will fly. I also assume that somebody has consulted tech-aware lawyers already regarding this issue.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
i always thought the energy of an electromagnetic wave decreases with the cube of the distance...
Infrastructure is an evolutionary process. It's the fact that we have cheaply available power that sets up the conditions by which we produce cool power hungry gadgets. It's the fact that it can be delivered in large amperages to densely packed locations that makes it so everyone in your apartment building can watch a separate big-screen T.V. at the same time.
:)
Thus, it is completely unfair to knock this technology because it will never be a match for a burly copper cable.
Imagine what it's like to live in a remote village that has no power available. First off, this almost always means no phones, land-line or cell. It also usually means that the families that are better off run their generators during certain hours of the day, producing noise and fumes, and enough power to get some work done, but they don't run them day and night. Four hours a day at a few hundred watts of power and no phones would significantly change most of our lives.
The most important thing microwave power could provide would be to enable a low power cell-site to give continuous operation at low cost. Unobstructed, 10 five watt channels would provide good communication for a few thousand people if used frugally (the way everybody did when roaming was $2 per minute). The people in the town could set up cellular fixed station adapters and wire their homes with copper and have a cheap phone in every room. With rechargeable batteries that charging up during the generator "power hours" they could have hours worth of night of phone calls to everyone else in the village, and more importantly to people outside the village with which they might want to do business. Even people without generator access could buy a pocket phone with two batteries and leave one at the neighbor's house charging while the other stayed in their pocket to give them emergency contact capability.
In regularly overcast areas (I live in one) the day often has enough light to see by, but not enough to read by. Just one 30 halogen bulb produces better reading light than any oil lamp I've ever used. Without light to read by, or TV of course, nights around here could get pretty boring, and homework pretty hard to do.
Since this is "a remote village" that means it's likely there are some uninhabited outskirts between it and the nearest big city. So between your microwave distribution points there wouldn't have to be any people at all. They could also aim the beam such that overspill wasn't directed toward the town.
I don't like the idea of radiation burns any more than the next person, but if done correctly there would be little danger. This could be a tremendous asset to people living off the grid, and to tower-climbing children wanting to roast hot dogs.
In order for this to work, they would have to make the beam extremely focused from transmitted to receiver.
If they don't do this, not only do they get the heatlh issues you point out, but the system simply won't work in practice.
All energy that is not captured by the receiver is lost.
Tor
Come on, people that work around microwave antennas do have higher incidences of cancers.
I am aware of cancer clusters around some high voltage power lines that was traced to chemical compounds (used in the insulators, IIRC), but no responsible studies that link microwave antennas to cancer. (I use the qualification "responsible" because I have seen "studies" by the cell-phones-are-killing-us wackos that make the claim, but their methods were so flawed it was funny.)
-- MarkusQ
What the hell is "the technology used in microwave ovens?!?" Buttons? Electricity? Light bulbs? Microwaves?? Do journalists even read their own inane statements? Hey, I just harnessed the technology used in keyboards to send an e-mail, it's revolutionary...
That old power line thing was disputed a while ago - mostly just a media fad. I was working at the NIH with one of the guys who first noticed the magnetic field effect on celles in culture.
It has never been shown to cause any cancers.
Radiat Res 2000 May;153(5 Pt 2):627-36 Related Articles,
Leukemia and lymphoma incidence in rodents exposed to low-frequency magnetic fields.
Boorman GA, Rafferty CN, Ward JM, Sills RC.
The PCB coolants used in/around many of those power stations is another subject.
Just to help hammer the nail home, there are many FDA approved devices that use magnetic or pulsed elctronic field devices to aid in bone healing. No reports of cancer yet in these either. Some increased cell growth yes, but cancer no.
This kinda crap science is usually perpetuated by the media and lawyers hoping to make a few bucks (well, usually they want a few million).
Bah!
..........FULL STOP.
The microwave systems that SSI have studied are basically like a UHF tv station transmitter (sans Weird Al).
Birds don't cook, people don't mutate, airplanes won't crash from this. Since this is a line of sight system, the range is probably less than 20 miles. Even so, it will make a terrific demo that proves the practicality of powering cities from SPS.
We aren't certain about the effects of EMF exposure, so we are going to find some poor village without electricity and offer them electricity through microwaves. The expirement can pay for itself through the utility fees we charge the villagers.
Boy, did I wake up cranky today . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Besides wondering what marketing genius came up with that name, just what kind of efficiency can you get with this principle. The losses are at:
a) conversion from AC to DC
b) conversion for transmission
c) losses due to Tx antenna efficiency
d) losses during transmission incl. energy lost toasting birds and folk getting in the way of the Tx beam
e) losses due to Rx antenna efficiency
f) losses during rectification to DC
g) losses during conversion to work (here light), more if you go to storage (battery) and back again.
Those add up pretty darn quick. Plus power received varies as an inverse square law of the distance from the transmitting site. Not very efficient. Seems like strictly a niche application.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
how long before we have people building their own recievers and taking electricity directed at other people's homes?
Guess who invented this technique? Nikola Tesla. These scientists may have built a system to use this, but they aren't the first ones. Read for yourself.
Efficiencies of over 60% have been shown in DC-DC transmission of power (look up microwave power beaming in google some time). Your "a" and "f" are the same issue, and the "rectenna" also adds "e" into the same process, so whatever loss there is in "rectennafying" it's one step. I've read 90+% is possible there; don't know if it's ever been done in practice. Your "g" is there no matter what you do with the power at the end, so that's a wash. "d" one hopes will be kept low - in any case, losses with traditional power lines are often 50% or more...
So that basically leaves "b", "c", and your final comment on the inverse square law as problems. The first two of these are a question of conversion efficiency which somewhat favors low frequencies. The inverse-square law problem is basically an antenna-focusing issue: obviously you want a high-gain antenna on the transmitting end, and a "rectenna" on the receiving end that is big enough to catch the main lobe of radiated power. Diffraction limits impose a minimum size on the two antennas; to keep those sizes down for a given transmission distance, you end up favoring high frequencies. The balance between antenna size and component efficiencies favors different configurations depending on total power, distance, etc, but end-to-end efficiencies of at least 60% have been proven, and 90+% is thought to be theoretically possible.
I believe the origin of this idea is Glaser's 1960's proposal for solar power satellites, which would beam power to earth via microwaves in the same manner. Not sure if Glaser used the term "rectenna", but O'Neill certainly did in "The High Frontier".
Energy: time to change the picture.
Hey, looks like Will Smith of Maxis was right. Microwave Power was available after 2020 in Simcity 2000.
Of course, does it also miss sometimes and cause a massive line of fire straight down the middle of your city?
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)