Broadcast Power? Wireless Energy?

Todd asks: "Today I was thinking about all the new wireless networks that are being offered out there (Apple's Airport, whatever the Dell thing is called, etc.). But, do any of these toys really do much good? If you afford to have power chords going all over the place, why not a phone or ethernet cable? My question is this... Is there a way to have wireless power sources? A base station could be set up in a person's house or place of business and then it would beam energy to the receiving source. I couldn't think of any laws that would allow this, but, then again, I'm not majoring in physics. I have no idea of how something like this could be done, but I do remember reading an article that said NASA plans on putting a huge solar collector in space that would beam energy to a plant on earth that would convert that energy to usable energy, so it got me thinking. Anyone know anything about something like this?" This has been a staple of a lot of sci-fi for as long as I can remember. How close are we to making this a reality? What dangers might such technologies create (as we are only now looking into the dangers created by cell-phones)?

Comments

It has been done

[JohnG]

This has been done as far back as 1899 by a man called Nikola Tesla. You might have heard of a Tesla Coil, well one of the strange properties of a Tesla Coil is it's ability to use air as a conductor. If you get a vacuum tube near a tesla coil it will light. If you put another tesla coil near it, then that tesla coil will fire up.
Tesla had in fact began development on a large 200 foot tall Tesla coil (actually a tesla magnifier) that he said would provide wireless energy to the whole world using the earth as his conducter. Documented experiments show that he could successfully cause the earth to conduct, whether or not he could cause the whole earth to conduct is another story, but Tesla is the man who invented AC Current, Radio (Marconi violated 14 Tesla patents when he invented the conventional radio and some think he ruined the coarse of broadcast power by limiting it to voice), Pioneering work on Radar and X-Rays, Electrical Transformers. There is almost literally nothing in your day to day life that Tesla didn't invent or make possible.
I have been doing lots of research on this in the past few days and have many ideas on how to make something like this work. One of Tesla's easiest to prove theories is his apparatus for the utilization of radiant energy. He said that all energy is present in the air at all times and that we could "grab" it for use. The way to do that is to cover a large conductor(sheet of metal) with and insulator. Connect a wire from this antennae to one end of a capacitor. Electricity will slowly charge the capacitor. Very slowly. The concep though can be prove with a TV set and a coin. Take a quarter and use some masking tape to tape the probe of an electrical meter to it. I just used one layer of tape. Ground the other probe then put the quarter up to a tv set. The voltage will go on, very very small voltage. Turn off the TV to cause the cathode rays to surge, I have gotten an instant of 1.5 volts from this using a Quarter! Not very many amps though, but power can be transmitted from one device to another with this theory using a cathode ray tube or ion propulsion or any such electrical charging substance. The basic theory is that the insulator (the tape) won't stop the cathode rays from going in, but will stop the electricity generated from coming back out.
It is so ironic that this question was posted now, as I have been very active in searching through Tesla's ideas and looking for ways to bring them into reality in the modern age. I am learning alot and plan on begining experiments that could see this type of technology developed. Tesla himself though eventually realized the opposition he would face in the power companies, there would be no real way to meter the power being used, so they couldn't charge all that money for it anymore. They off course wouldn't like this even if it would mean that cell phones and laptops and stuff would work anyhwere without worry of batteries. But in todays day and age it would still be good for each person to have an in-home power transmitter.
As I said I plan to begin experiments soon and hope to find some way of raising funds for such an endeavor, I would pretty much have to start almost from ground zero though as all Tesla's data is in his head. I might put up a website for either fund raising purposes or purely informational. I'll try to post the news to Slashdot, but it seems to be as though real tech news doesn't seem to make it onto /.'s pages anymore. :(

PS: If anyone has a few million dollars to through my way for research I would be much obliged. hehe)

Re:It has been done

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Broadcast power is in use, in a very limited fashion. You know those crystal radio kits you get at Radio Shack for $6? Well, those, and other crystal radios, are powered off of broadcast power. I'm not a physics type, so I don't really understand the mechanism, but my impression is that the crystal (or diode, in the newer ones) converts the power from all the random radio stations out there into just enough power to power its incredibly-simple AM radio. If anything, that's proof that it's possible on a wide scale, and that Marconi's abuse of the possibility didn't lead to a complete loss of broadcast power. :)

My main problem with broadcast power is that any usable levels of electricity in the air will make things difficult on our modern transistor-based way of life. It's already hard enough to keep CPUs from crashing from their own stray electrons. We'd need to start having properly-shielded computer cases if we're going to go to broadcast power on a nontrivial scale. Fortunately, I don't see a problem with having to actually shield the computer. :) The other problem which people are quick to point out is there's no way for this to be regulated; the only way I can see is that the tesla magnifiers would have to be government-subsidized, probably with a massive tax on broadcast-powered consumer goods or something, thus basically paying the power bills up front or something.

But broadcast power coupled with cheap fusion could easily lead to utopia, if humans at large can get altruism through their thick skulls....
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

NASAs done it in space already

[nacho]

I'm not sure when it was done, or what it was called (mid-90s I think), but this has been done in space.

As far as I can remember, a satellite was sent up into LEO, and separated in two pieces. One piece with a solar collector and a high-powered microwave transmitter, and the other end with a microwave reciever and a downlink to good-ol' Terra.

Essentially, they transmitted somewhere around 100kW of power, and about 86kW was recieved. So, it actually works, but anything caught in the path was fried like a mouse put in a microwave. They plan on using this technology on remote areas like Mars or something, where there are no biologicals that can be harmed by that.

If its very _very_ *VERY* accurate, they could beam the power down to a converted off-shore oil-rig capable of recieving the power, then running it along a power cable to the shore, but I wouldn't trust the geo-stationary orbit of the transmitter...I wouldn't want the orbit to decay, and start transmitting right over my house. :-\

Re:NASAs done it in space already

[SEWilco]

It's been done on Earth. Well over a decade ago I saw on TV (perhaps "NOVA") a bank of light bulbs on a tower being lit by power received from another tower. You don't need a pile of solar cells in orbit to test microwave transmission engineering.

Solar Power Satellite (SPS)

[SEWilco]

The general consensus is that Tesla's idea may work, but only on a planet where you are not using metal in building structures, cars, machinery, telephone, cable TV, etc. Anything metal would have to be designed to not have random shapes be power antennas. And be careful of the design of your belt buckle.

As for Solar Power Satellites, the concept still exists. Various designs exist. They await a way to get enough material cheaply enough into orbit without using a surface-launched Orion Drive.

The term "Solar Power Satellites" or "Satellite Power Stations" comes up with a bunch of web pages. Browse.

Its available now

[hyptest]

Its available and widely in use today(well, at least for calculators). Transmitter: Any lightbulb Receiver: Any solar cell Eric

Re:Its available now

[jfunk]

Solar cells are horrendously inefficient. They are also extremely expensive.

You'll notice that only the smallest of calculators have solar cells. I haven't seen a solar powered graphing calculator.

Solar tangent on broadcast energy, and stuff.

[billn]

Browsing through the current discussion (which I'm happy to see if rife with content), my caffiene-induced long memory recalled an article posted to /. recently about artificial photosynthesis, using solar energy to fuel chemical reactions in the same manner that plants do it. I could see something like this applied to a small plate on the hood of my truck, keeping my battery charged. Or not, since I live in Arizona, and don't want my truck becoming self-aware.

Back on topic.. As mentioned previously, the problem with broadcast power is the stuff that gets in between. Biomass tends to react poorly to the levels we'd need to power all our toys. Don't believe me? Call the people who live on Mercury, and their disgruntled neighbors on Venus. Broadcast energy, like microwave (as was mentioned in a previous post), has a side effect of particle excitation in the medium. Done in space, between non-terrestrial platforms, it wouldn't be much of a problem. Done on terra firma, you begin generating biological side effects caused by pumping extra heat into the immediate environment. Over time and in abundance, you contribute to trivial things like greenhouse effects, technicians hanging out on the roof and angling dishes at random birds, and (God forbid) roach mutation.

Air by itself isn't a practical medium for transmission of high energy. The required power outputs are just to high, and the return isn't high enough. Old 'Star Wars' theory involving ground based lasers (for the purpose of courtesy polishing of enemy spy satellites to a glossy shine) postulates the leeching properties of 'thermal blooming' as heating air begins distorting the optical path and decreasing efficiency.

But.

Another article posted on /. back in May/99, discussed the use of an ultr aviolet laser emitting a stream of photons to perform optical path ionization to facilitate transmission of electricity (25ma, 100hz) to ranges of 100 meters! Granted, the use they purport is for tasers, and my immediate thoughts went back to cat experimentation (Hey, PETA, I want some 9v cells for Christmas), but the cross-over application possibilities exist.

Combinations of the two concepts would probably result in marked increases in efficiency, but working in non-vacuum environments still leaves you open to transmission degradation due to something as simple as wholesale friction.

Current limitations aside, other recent developments in miniaturization opens a door to using low power broadcast technology to provide power to devices that don't need a lot (like that hokey 'smart dust' concept, that you can counter with in-born allergies and thermonuclear sneeze assaults). You've played Starcraft. The Protoss concept of short range power pylons lends itself well to this, albeit on a smaller scale.

Relaying power between low-draw sensor clusters would be a good application, too. Weather monitoring, tracking HIGH LEVELS OF RF/EM RADIATION IN URBAN SETTINGS, and trivial biomass affecting things like that would be good, too.

Heinlein

[Tet]

Read Robert Heinlein's "Waldo". Broadcast power is fine for certain specialised applications, but I'm very uneasy about it becoming commonplace.