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Sony Prototype Sends Electricity Through the Air

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the efficiency-is-overrated dept.

itwbennett writes "Sony announced Friday that it has developed a prototype power system based on magnetic resonance that can send 'a conventional 100 volt electricity supply over a distance of 50 centimeters to power a 22-inch LCD television.' Unfortunately, Sony's prototype wasted 1/5 of the power fed into it and additional losses 'occurred in circuitry connected to the secondary coil so the original 80 watts of power was cut by roughly a quarter to 60 watts once it had made its way through the system.'"

17 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. can we get this tagged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    globalwarming please?

    seriously, wasting 1/5th of power just so you don't have to install some fucking wiring is just plain wrong. that's ignoring the fact that you will probably want to wire it up through hdmi anyway.

    cocksuckers. one side of the tech business is actively thinking "hmmm fossil fuels will be running out, WTF are we gonna do" whilst the other side goes "WOOOOOOOOOO! Wireless power! PARTY ON!"

    1. Re:can we get this tagged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm appalled. This "prototype" isn't already perfected technology and they had the gall to send out a press release! They should just chunk the idea out the window! And please people, please stop creating this technologizma stuff because it's destroying Mother Earth.

    2. Re:can we get this tagged by Rei · · Score: 5, Insightful

      75% efficiency is perfectly acceptable for low power devices. Making and shipping alkaline batteries repeatedly, or relying on rechargeable NiMH batteries that often leak more energy than gets used in the device, is certainly far more wasteful. So using this sort of tech to power those kinds of devices (clocks, smoke alarms, stick-on lights, etc) sounds quite reasonable. I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again. In fact, 75% efficiency means it'd probably be a about breakeven powering a NiMH Roomba or Scooba versus charging their packs (in addition to leaking, NiMH isn't a very efficient charger). So you could have your home robotics never leak charge or have to waste energy charging, and never have battery packs need to be replaced, as well as the obvious "no limit on how long they can run for before needing to go back to dock".

      They're going to have to significantly improve on the range, though. 1 1/2 feet isn't much at all.

      Another interesting possibility would be to have a pocket-sized device powered by a li-ion battery pack. Carry it on your person and all of your portable gismos -- cameras, flashlights, cell phones, etc -- stay charged. When you get back home or to your hotel room, you plug it in to charge it. They wouldn't need as much range improvement, but they would need to make it a lot smaller than 40cm across (unless it'd be something you carry in a backpack).

      Certainly you don't want 75% efficiency running TVs or charging electric cars (unless you can do it on the road, for long trip range extending -- but then you'd need some *serious* range!). But for battery-powered devices, that's fine.

      --
      I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
    3. Re:can we get this tagged by linguizic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      one side of the tech business is actively thinking "hmmm fossil fuels will be running out, WTF are we gonna do" whilst the other side goes "WOOOOOOOOOO! Wireless power! PARTY ON!"

      Don't be a doofus, this is a prototype. It's not like they're releasing it for mass consumption. Besides, who says we can't have wireless green electricity. The only thing NOT green about this is where the electricity comes from. Who gives a shit if it wastes 1/5th of the power if all that power comes from solar panels. There are plenty of nasty false dichotomies in the public sphere (nature/nurture, democrat/republican) we don't need another one. Don't be a doofus.

      --
      Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
    4. Re:can we get this tagged by negRo_slim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd certainly buy a $20 device that meant I never had to change a smoke alarm or clock battery again.

      What happens when the power goes out? Does the $20 dollar device have a battery?

      --
      On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
    5. Re:can we get this tagged by smallfries · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed, just because this early prototype has 75% efficiency we must assume that the maximum that can ever be achieved. Best to just stop investigating it instead of working on improving the range and efficiency. After all scientific progress has advanced quite far enough hasn't it?

      God forbid that we improve this technology and use it to replace other sources of loss to reduce energy consumption! After all we are rapidly moving towards an electric infrastructure for vehicles, and they are always this close to the road. Imagine just how bad it would be for global warming if we replaced batteries (and their associated losses) with this technology. Evil scientists.

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    6. Re:can we get this tagged by plague911 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Do you have any idea how much power is used to actually produce that few inches of wire? Doubtfull as it may be but systems like this may end up saving energy in the future. Even if they are not 100% energy efficient. Imagine how much money/energy would be saved if you never had to wire a house in the first place. Or if we could actualy get a wireless transmission system. Those telephone polls don't grow on trees.... Get a clue

    7. Re:can we get this tagged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So... solar cells are ~30% efficent, and from that we get 20% of that efficiency.
      This means that a photovoltaic array that takes a LOT of energy to create in the first place, takes years to hit the break even point, and eventually needs to be replaced, would likely end up in a net energy loss situation running one of these systems. Better to use the energy generated from solar panels as efficiently as possible, so there is actually some net energy gain from the system.

  2. video source? by whizzard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you still need a cable to connect your video sources, what's the point?

    1. Re:video source? by JeanBaptiste · · Score: 3, Insightful

      uh, wireless hdmi?

  3. WiTricity? by mjihad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But how is it different from WiTricity?

    --
    http://blogs.lns.kicks-ass.net/moonjihad/
  4. Unfortunately? That's really good efficiency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is impressive efficiency.

    50cm is still too short though, so let's see if the efficiency remains workable as distance increases (square law).

  5. Re:Basic physics/electronics fail? by stonedcat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Lets stop innovation entirely and let technology sit and stagnate for a few hundred years.
    It's a good thing you showed us the error of our ways or we might have advanced by leaps and bounds.

    --
    You can't take the sky from me.
  6. Re:Unfortunately? That's really good efficiency by Chuckstar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You'd be hard pressed to measure the line loss of a standard copper wire over two feet. It's probably like 99% efficient, if not higher.

  7. Re:What would it do to my hand ... by Cyko_01 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    nothing, it uses magnetic resonance, like an MRI machine. Are your hands magnetic?

  8. Not gonna happen by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All this "broadcasting power" stuff is not going to fly.

    All the schemes that have been tried by Tesla and latecomers don't have a chance. Either they're spewing out energy, which goes down in intensity as the square of the distance, or they're like Sony, and making big air-core transformers, where the fields go down as the CUBE of the distance. You'll notice it takes a 40cm coil to send power 50cm. And so on.

    Then there's the problem with all the scattered energy that does not end up in the receiving device. We're talking many watts of power. Microwave ovens are only allowed to leak a thousandth of a watt-- no national safety agency is going to allow ten thousand times that much power wandering around our houses. Yes, the power couples somewhat weakly to flesh, but it's still a lot of power to be bathing in 24/7.

  9. Re:Japanese IQ and European IQ by greentshirt · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Even if one ignored all the rest of the bigoted idiocy in your post, you still forgot what they teach you in almost every first year research methods class: correlation does not imply causation. Furthermore, even though I'm sure you couldn't produce a peer reviewed study that backs up your asinine assertions, such a study would be asinine in and of itself because an IQ test is something that has been widely challenge in regards to legitimacy in gauging intelligence, and is highly culturally biased. Are you going to start talking about dianetics or eugenics next? Lets skip that and just ask for Obama's birth certificate already. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you need to cling on to ethnicity or racial background for a sense of self, and allowing it to define you, you're basically stating that the most significant, most important thing about you is something you had absolutely no control over; yet it is more significant and more important than all of your life achievements. In conclusion, you're a tool.