Pushing 800W of Wireless Power at 5 Meters

Joe Decker writes "The Nevada Lightning Laboratory has experimented with Nicola Tesla's methods of wireless power transmission to push 800 Watts over 5 meters, besting MITs mark of 60W over 2 meters last year. (May I dream of wireless laptop power? I hate power cords.)"

Comments

Lets think about this for a while

[YrWrstNtmr]

800 Watts over 5 meters, ...
(May I dream of wireless laptop power? I hate power cords.)

I think I'll pass on that. Don't really want that sort of power aimed directly at the boys.

Re:Lets think about this for a while

[CrimsonAvenger]

It's bad enough my electric hybrid Honda bathes me with EM waves ever time I accelerate

Even more horrifying, every time you step outdoors, the Sun bathes you in EM waves!

Re:Lets think about this for a while

[profplump]

If a milliwatt cellphone has the (potential) ability to cause DNA recombination errors

It doesn't. If it did, you would have been killed by the local broadcast media stations years ago. Or, your know, the sun -- that giant ball throwing gigawatts of wide-spectrum EM radiation at us all day, every day.

That's nothing

[internerdj]

I've seen more watts over more distance all my life.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/primer/lightning/ltg_damage.html
You just don't want to stand between the source and the destination...

Re:hmmmm

[JesseL]

The point wasn't that investment in infrastructure is a waste.

Wireless power transmission is wasteful. Between the inverse square law and eddy currents induced in everything remotely conductive between point A and point B, wireless power would lose a huge percentage of the useful energy generated.

Re:hmmmm

[V!NCENT]

Wireless power is only suitable for everything that is portable. Portable electronics require chargeable batteries. Chargeable batteries are also a wasteful.

Chargeable batteries also generate heat, are harmful to the environment when disposed and can cause fires and serious injury to the point of death when they explode.

There is no point not to use wireless power.

terrible efficiency...

[gillbates]

Look at the transfer efficiency: they're using a 3.6 kW transmitter to power a mere 775 watt load.

At distances beyond ten meters, even steam engines have better efficiency. When you consider the best efficiency they had was 38%, and most power plants are about 33% efficient, they need a considerable improvement for this to be practical. By way of comparison, the typical cable delivery system is about 90% efficient and doesn't have the somewhat undesirable property of setting nearby electronics on fire.

Re:hmmmm

[kabocox]

Wasteful, but extremely useful for certain purposes. Most electric toothbrushes are a perfect example, if solved slightly differently - you don't want unsealed electrical points on a device that gets wet in normal use. Any other sealed device that needs charging could possibly benefit from this.

So you have a wireless power transmitter in the bathroom integrated in the normal electrical outlet. What powered bathroom devices could we power this way? Tooth brushes, razors, vanity mirrors, shower radios, all sorts of kids toys, and that adult bath toy the battery powered vibrator.

Cell phones, cordless phones, and remotes might also be good to charge via this method as well.

Heck, making AA, AAA, C, and D sized "batteries" that just receives "wireless power" from the "wireless transmitter" would let you power some of those kids toys for as long as you have the wireless transmitter plugged in. That would be much better than running down the batteries really quickly and then either having to recharge or get new ones.

Re:Wireless power + laptop == bad

[snspdaarf]

I don't want my zipper turning into a toaster either.