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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.)"
The key to this story is the name of the lab... Its the friggin LIGHTNING laboratory! So no, this will not ever really be useful. This is just a directed static discharge.
The frequency of EM radiation is really important, the kind of abuse you can withstand without damage at kHz and MHz frequencies is *NOT* the same you can at GHz frequencies, or for that matter, ultra-low (less than 1Hz) frequencies.
And the electrical field matters a lot, too. Staying inside high density *electrical* fields for long periods is a sure way to get leukemia. This is why you have to be either very desperate, or very stupid, to sleep/work/stay every day near a >38kV grid power lines.
Setting aside concerns about increasing environmental EMF, what would wireless power offer other than convenience?
Mobility.
Wireless power transmission is more wasteful than conventional methods of power delivery.
... to this day. I am sure research can make it more efficient over time. Maybe by sensors that are able to locate devices so that power supplies can target them, therefore being more efficient. When devices are not in range, power supplies could be automatically switched off
On another note, why would we create infrastructure that could interfere with neural interfaces?
Nobody said that wireless power needs to work the way that it works now. Who knows? Maybe a new scientific discovery at CERN could enable non-damaging wireless power implementation?
[...] why would we saturate our environment with electricity when the next gen of interfaces rely on reading minute electrical impulses?
It is totally uncertain as to whether these interfaces are going the be accepted, but a work-around could be blocking signals of electric pulses that are not minute. Of course there is always a solution... I would even like it if there would be anything to disrupt mind-reading technology as it opens up a huge possibility to impair privacy and personal security.
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True, but it does improve mobility when you can wirelessly recharge your batteries at a train station (for example). When your laptop battery is drained because you took it with you (to school or work), you don't need to be chained with it to the wall when you're back at home.
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Wireless power is only suitable for everything that is portable
There is no point not to use wireless power.
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Suppose my problem is to find another problem for which there is no solution. Does my problem have a solution, or not? And either way, how does that affect your claim? ;-)
If your problem is to find problems than the solution to that is to stop having this problem by not looking for problems anymore. This doesn't affect my claim, just your psyche. If you found a problem that doesn't have a solution then the solution to that problem would not exist. This affects my claim as follows: it makes it wrong.
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