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Haier Plans To Embed Area Wireless Chargers In Home Appliances

Posted by samzenpus on from the power-up dept.

Lucas123 writes Haier has signed a development agreement with Energous, a maker of the WattUp wireless charging router. Haier plans incorporate the technology in appliances allowing enabled mobile devices and wearables to take a charge at up 15 feet away. The white goods maker is expected to come out with the enabled appliances in the next 14 months or so. The WattUp router uses radio frequency (RF) transmissions to send up to 4 watts of power in a 15-ft. radius. Within 5 feet of a WattUp wireless router, a mobile device can be charged at the same rate as if it were plugged into a wall socket, but as the distance increase the charging capability dissipates. For example, at a range of 5-to-10 feet, charging capability drops to 2 watts per device and at 10-to-15 feet, the router puts out 1 watt per device (4 watts total). Pleasanton, Calif.-based Energous raised nearly $25 million when it went public earlier this year. Its chief marketing officer said the company has joint development agreements in the works with battery makers, smartphone sleeve and wearable device manufacturers. Haier hasn't disclosed what products it plans to enable with wireless charging.

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds wasteful and stupid ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, I might have my fridge and my freezer and my washing machine emitting power on the off-beat chance that a device is nearby which needs it? Am I going to be using more power to broadcast it when it's not needed? If so, this is incredibly stupid.

    Yay! Let's all spent more for our appliances and pay higher electrical bills so that our fridge could be standing by to charge our cell phones.

    Is a frigging charger that had to navigate that we need out fscking applilances just beaming power just in case?

    I'm sorry, but the entire idea of this sounds pretty stupid to me.

    Oh, but it's fridge 3.0, it's supposed to be connected to the interweb and be a hotspot for my @%$^$# phone. I don't see much value in this product for me.

    Now get off my fscking lawn, you kids and your dancy do-dads and whirly-mahoozitzes. This is just technology for the sake of it.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Sounds wasteful and stupid ... by hedgemage · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I really want to hear some numbers to inform me how efficient this is. I am not a EE or physicist, so I'm having a hard time seeing how this could be efficient in any way.
      Wouldn't wireless charging in this sense, even if it was initiated by the target device, result in a lot of wasted power? If a transmitter is beaming out power it wouldn't all be 'captured' by a device needing to be charged, would it?
      Isn't this similar to filling a glass of water by setting it on your front lawn and turning on the sprinklers? Yes the glass will fill, but in the process, a lot of water has been broadcast to places where the glass wasn't there to receive it.

  2. Roughly 16 watts radiated per 'charger' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At 4 watts delivered to up to 4 devices at the same time, there has to be at least 16 watts radiated power. At the specified frequency of 5.6-5.8 MHz, or a wavelength of about 52 meters, devices charging at the full 4 watt rate are within 5 feet or 1.5 meters, or about 3% of a wavelength. This is a near-field coupled RF system, so it behaves a bit like a transformer. The efficiency will be very sensitive to relative orientation of the charger and load, and to proximity of other large metal objects, especially ones that are 1/4 wavelength multiples (13 meters). With luck, they might see 50-80% efficiency. Use in a multi-story steel frame building will be interesting.

    The transmitter and receiver will almost certainly be using resonant loop antennas, which again act like the primary and secondary of a transformer. It may be possible to run the transmitter at a reduced power until it sees a load appear when a receiver's loop antenna is in it's near field. This could be fooled by that steel frame building into delivering full power continuously to slightly warm the structure. A more reliable system would use two-way communication between the charger and load, at the expense of considerably more complex circuitry. Some of the docs from Energious mention Bluetooth, so they may be using a Bluetooth link to initiate and arbitrate the charging operation.

    At 52 meters, the wavelength is much too long to interact with a human, so I'm not worried about medical effects. I am concerned about the potential for radio frequency interference, as each of these chargers will represent a 16 watt shortwave transmitter build without much regard to signal quality. As an amateur radio operator, I know that at these frequencies and power levels, I can throw a radio signal hundreds to thousands of miles. The thought of a few hundred thousand refrigerators and microwaves all busily transmitting, with harmonics and intermodulation effects spreading their signal across the radio spectrum seems like a perfect formula for massive radio communications interference.