“Intel has made progress in a technology that could lead to the wireless recharging of gadgets and the end of the power-cord spaghetti behind electronic devices,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times.
“It says it has increased the efficiency of a technique for wirelessly powering consumer gadgets and computers, a development that could allow a person to simply place a device on a desktop countertop to power it. It could bring the consumer electronics industry a step closer to a world without wires,” Markoff reports.
“On Thursday, the chip maker plans to demonstrate the use of a magnetic field to broadcast up to 60 watts of power two to three feet. It says it can do that losing only 25 percent of the power in transmission,” Markoff reports.
“The Intel team describes its system as a “wireless resonant energy link,” and is experimenting with antennas less than two feet in diameter to remotely light a 60-watt light bulb,” Markoff reports.
“The Intel researchers said they were thinking about designing a system that would make it possible to recharge a laptop computer without wires,” Markoff reports.
More in the full article here.
AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
What a bunch of idiots! Tesla this, tesla that. wireless firewire, cancer… jeebus effing key-rist!
HELLO! R&D;stands for “Research & Development”, so there really should be no debate about whether 25% is “good enough”. This is obviously a work in progress.
In fact, it’s an amazing feat in it’s current state. Last time I tried this, I measured a 100% power loss. Anyone on this board do better than me?
Uh, hello people, this is EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH! It’s not a production model!
Of course 25% power loss is too much. But Intel has managed to transfer 75% power wirelessly to an electronics device. That is phenomenal progress.
Before any product is released, it would have to be much, much more efficient. Saving power cables is not worth increasing your power bill by 25%, nor could most power grids handle a 25% increase in demand.
This is the future of portable devices, and eventually perhaps power delivered to other fixtures like light bulbs and refrigerators. How cool would it be to have lights in your house that you could just pick up and move wherever you wanted and never worry about plugging them in, tripping on extension cords, etc.?
AP – yes
A Transformer
Moves ‘electrons’ across a space with no touchy feely
Happy to read so many here with knowledge of basic electricity 101
Damn, this is an eclectic group you have MDN
BC
Less than 2 FEET in diameter?
Man. They’ll have to mount that in one Big Ass Table…
With the 25% power loss, this is technology is going to be DOA. A solution in search for a problem.
Then again, don’t windows machines use 25% of their power searching for viruses all the time?
Its coming at last!!!!! Apple is going to announce the iTransport at the next Macworld
Scotty – 3 to beam up – Energize!!!!!!!!
Aye Captain!
Has anyone here seen the movie “The Quiet Earth” from New Zealand. The premise is that scientists have just switched on a global wireless electricity network, and well…it didn’t turn out as expected. A fascinating and haunting movie available on Netflix.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089869/
iPhones are sold at Teslas in the UK.
Just like the navy boys, we’ll all be having Daughters and mutants in the near future
WOW! Now I can blow up my doll without plugging her in.
Tesla kicked @$$ !!!
Tesla – Didn’t his patents get “absorbed” by the government?
90 years of loss techno-evolution, with science fiddling with the scraps. Imagine what could have been without the intervention?
This is SCARY!
If it won’t burn your balls, your sperm cells could be mutated.
…And probably lots of new types of cancer cases all around… ;(
MobileMe flaw (or “how to spam Steve Jobs”)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/21/an-easy-way-to-retrieve-the-entire-mobileme-user-email-list/
Piss on the carbon footprint.
Do it guys, build it.
Tree huggers, go climb back up into your tree. Hussein Obama will be joining you soon.
@X
So, we are all going to hell in a handbasket, why not enjoy the ride, eh, X? Anyone who tries to act responsibly is a tree hugger? Just be quiet and let the grown-ups talk.
“25% power loss is huge.” No, not really. If you know your power equations and engineering, power loss has always been pretty large. Even your car motor, turning gas into motion is pretty wasteful.
The key to this system is closeness. If you have a mat of some kind that you can lay your equipment on, so the distance between the broadcast energy and your receiver coils is small, the energy efficiency goes way up. (also, the coil / receiver in the receiving unit – the bigger more efficient the design the better).
Just a thought.
en
Tesla best and biggest wireless experiment was lighting a large amount of bulbs 2 miles away in Colorado Springs. One writer at the time claimed 20 miles, but there is discrepancies with that distance.
So even just 2 miles is huge. His bigger experiment in New York was to test hundreds of miles. Odd that partway thru building this big experiment his funding was pulled and he could not continue. The power companies most likely figured out that there was no way to meter peoples use if it was wireless transmission.
Just like the Intel device. If your cube was back to back with one that had this, most likely you would be in the field range and could siphon off of it.
Cool. And now my fillings glow!
Dick “Mr. Cold War” Cheney would love it if pacemakers were made with wirelessly rechargeable batteries!
Oh wait…that might mean he would be around longer. Never mind.
One guy actually build magnetic collections on his property where the high tension wires went through and used it to not only generate his own power but sell it back to the power company.
There’s a lot of inefficiency in our current system. Plenty of room for improvement all around.
Tesla was the first thing I though of when I heard this story, then an old Robert Heinlein novel. A great idea if it can be made to work…