Wireless Power Consortium Pushes For Standard

Slatterz writes "We've already heard about wireless power before, but now we're a step closer to throwing away our power cables and chargers. A consortium of eight companies has launched an initiative to develop a wireless power standard. The drive was announced at the first Wireless Power Consortium conference at the Hong Kong Science Park yesterday. Most consumer electronic devices require a different charger, and the resulting tangle of wires and bulky devices is 'ugly, frustrating and inconvenient to use,' the group said. 'Wireless power charging takes away the need for wires and connectors. You simply drop your mobile phone, game device, electric shaver on the charging station and the battery is recharged,' explained Satoru Nishimura, senior manager at Sanyo."

Comments

But...

[fxkr]

Isn't this "wireless power" stuff just a terrible waste of energy?

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and don't forget that the world is in something of a power-crunch as well. You would've thought that after this year's spike in energy prices, people would've gotten the hint about more efficient systems saving them money.

Sadly, this looks to be a case of form over functionality. Still, I know I would never buy one of these. Saving myself a foot or two of cabling simply isn't worth an increased energy bill.

Re:But...

[Valdrax]

How exactly does the power go from AC in the wall to the near field without going through a DC converter? How do you ensure that is not just sucking power out of the wall?

Re:But...

[Herby Sagues]

One benefit for the environment: a battery's life is inversely proportional to the number of times it was completely discharged. If you tend not to charge your phone every day, you are likely to let it run dry evey once in a while. That means the battery is not going to last much more than a year, and after that the battery goes to the dump, and you need a new one. Both the battery in the trash and the need to manufacture a new one would be saved if you charged your phone every day. And that's much easier to guarantee when charging your phone only requires putting it on your desk. Given the (low) amount of energy a phone uses over its full life, this means probably a net gain for the environment.

Re:But...

[necro81]

would be more efficient than your laptop's power pack.

Well, yes and no. The laptop power adapter changes AC line voltage to some DC voltage, which the computer the uses. It's a single conversion step.

Now consider wireless power. It isn't going to be coming like some aether from the walls - you're going to need to produce it somewhere, somehow, probably from AC line voltage via a, you guessed it, power adapter. So the 75% to 90% wireless transmission efficiency is on top of the efficiency of the power adapter used to create the wireless power in the first place.

A second consideration in either case is: where does the lost energy go? In the case of a power adapter for a laptop, it is lost almost entirely as waste heat. In the case of wireless, it is partly lost as heat (e.g., resistive losses in the coils), but a lot of it is lost as electromagnetic radiation. While I'm not one to harp on about "OMG, power lines cause cancer!", if all of us start pumping out tens of watts of electromagnetic energy, it's going to cause problems. The problems may manifest themselves as marginally increased cancer rates, but I worry more about the effect on all kinds of electronic equipment that wasn't designed to be immune to those kinds of power levels.

Why not just standardize the cables?

[PolarBearFire]

Wireless power is only practical in short ranges anyway. With standardized cables I wouldn't have drawerfuls of power cables.

Mid Range Wireless

[rockNme2349]

Short range wireless power is alright, it makes charging a little easier, but the real revolution is going to be when an efficient method of mid-range wireless power is developed.

If you can get wireless power in an entire room then we can finally ditch the last cord to our laptops, which is what consumers are waiting for when they ask for wireless power. If you have to put the items on a tray, it is a little easier, but it might as well be a dock or a physical connection. If you have power to an entire room, your cell phone and mobile devices can charge in your pocket without you worrying, bringing the real convenience.

Re:Mid Range Wireless

[jfeldredge]

Wireless power covering an entire room will have to wait until wireless devices' power requirements go low enough that the radiated energy won't be a hazard to the user. At the power levels currently used by laptops, the power source would have to emit enough energy that you would microwave-cook the user. The device described in this article is probably using short-range magnetic coupling, not radio waves; not a particular threat to health, but putting your laptop on top of the charger would probably scramble the hard drive.

Transformers are efficient

[Nefarious Wheel]

Isn't this "wireless power" stuff just a terrible waste of energy?

Transformers (not the Hasbro sort) are basically two adjacent coils, with the difference in the number of windings on each side determining the voltage step-up or step-down.

Here you have what is basically a transformer, just with the coils moved further away from each other. A 1:1 step ratio in a transformer is pretty efficient.

You're not wasting electricity spraying electrons in the air like a water sprinkler, there has to be a circuit before potential can be moved from one coil to the other. Electronics can keep idle current to a minimum. Where's the problem?

Re:Transformers are efficient

[cdrguru]

Shaver's plug gets bust? Would be nice to replace the plug and not the whole damn thing, etc. This bypasses that entirely.

Sure. Let's just use this other power adapter from something else. With a little extra force, see, it fits fine. OK, now just to plug it in...

BLAMMO!!!!

Wife comes running in and sees the disaster and, being a good American, calls a lawyer.

This is why power adapters of different voltages, different capacities and different functionalities are designed with unique connectors. The intent is to keep you from causing problems for the company via lawsuits. Lawsuits caused directly by your ability to connect two mismatched devices together. Unless this risk can be eliminated, you are not going to get rid of every device having a different and unique connector.

Now it might be nice if there was an ISO standard for connectors (like there is for mains power connections) so there would be a few thousand "standard" connectors for every given voltage, regulation mode, current and AC or DC variety. This would solve everyone's problem, wouldn't it? Until you attempt to get everyone behind the idea of the few thousand "standard" connectors. That are all unique and different from today's non-standard connectors.

Re:Transformers are efficient

[BlueStrat]

Two Coils joined with a Core. No Core, and the efficiency goes way down

That depends on the frequency of the AC voltage/current. At lower frequencies, an iron core is needed to help concentrate and focus the electromagnetic field due to the extremely-long wavelengths involved. Higher frequencies not so much. At the right frequency, a conductive loop an inch or so in diameter in the charger and the device under charge would be plenty to transfer power at surprisingly-high efficiencies depending on the range required.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Transformers are efficient

[5of0]

I was going to leave this alone, but...+1 informative? Really?
Hold the phone, let me call my friends at MIT and let them know that their wireless chargers are hopeless, because they don't have a core.

*facepalm*...air is still a core. And the effect is diminished with large coils, like these people are using. And smaller distances, which is the case with cell phones. I'm pretty sure the engineers at MIT have figured this stuff out.

Re:Transformers are efficient

[BlueStrat]

Unfortunately, 400 hertz is about the optimum frequency for inductive loads to be as efficient without a core as a 60 hertz inductive load is with a core.

Better tell that to all the radio transmitter designers that use nothing more than two coils in proximity to each other to couple many watts of power from the transmitters' plate-tank circuit to the load.

And then there is the whole thing about the established power grid running at 50 to 60 hertz

Switching power supplies are ubiquitous these days and could be incorporated into a charger stand or similar quite easily. Quite easy to convert 50-60Hz power to a higher frequency and with modern designs and components efficiency isn't too bad, considering.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Scared, paranoid?

[guruevi]

I work in a 3 Tesla fMRI environment. You know, the thing with the superconductive, super cooled magnets that require a few kV to maintain and that eventually has enough power to align all water molecules in your body and then send another magnetic field through to take pictures of your physical structure. You know if your head needs to be scanned, we put it inside a head coil which is basically the secondary coil side of a transformer. I usually work on the computers right next to the power boxes (huge cabinets with transformers in them).

So far, fMRI has produced no cancers in me, the fMRI specialist who worked in fMRI for the last 20 years and is next to the machine on a daily basis, the technicians that maintain it or any of the subjects (except for the ones already having cancer or in which they induced cancer to study). Also, fMRI has no reported effects on pregnancy although we won't allow it because of the electricity that can be induced in the body but the main reason would be the contrast fluids.

I don't believe your mW sender/receiver has enough power to harm let alone kill anyone.