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?

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.

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

[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: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.