Wireless Power

[Doombard]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080821...ipcompanyintel


After reading this one obvious thing stood out to me that I thought was left out. Isn't there the potential for say, big wireless power towers alongside roads to power electric cars? Probably not for a long ass time when I'm like 80 and I can tell my grandkids "When I was young, we had to pump gas into our cars! Uphill both ways in 10 feet of snow, and we LIKED it!

[riddaraan]

Motherfuck.... I came up with this idea like 8 years ago, and people laughed at me and said I was stupid.

[Myst]

how much power does it take to generate a magnetic field powerful enough to charge 1,000 laptops in an airport terminal? gonna take time to refine the technology, but cool nonetheless. neat find.

[Mulligan]

Motherfuck.... I came up with this idea like 8 years ago, and people laughed at me and said I was stupid.

This idea has existed for a long time, but as they said in the article its a matter of doing it safely and effectively. I would say in less than 10 years there will be a variety of stationary electronics powered through this method. As for cars traveling at high speeds i think it would be a little more difficult. I also wonder how this technology would affect people who have pacemakers.

[Elvis]

I invented the internet.

[octopus]

We're now one step closer to making F-Zero a reality!

[-Zer0-]

Deuterion Beam

[riddaraan]

One of my engineers at work pointed out Nicola Tesla...

[Cyn]

Since I spend a lot of time at work running power cable (00 feeder, socapex, lots of 2P&G) or coiling them up, my coworkers and I have been joking for years that someone should invent this lol. Shame I'll be dead or retired before it happens.

[zoobernut]

One of my engineers at work pointed out Nicola Tesla...

Beat me to it I was just about to mention him. This technology is really cool as long as the magnetic field is not strong enough to actually effect anything, Magnets have a tendency to mess with things like tube tvs (I know most people don't even have these anymore) or pacemakers or hard drives ....

[Ramor]

Beat me to it I was just about to mention him. This technology is really cool as long as the magnetic field is not strong enough to actually effect anything, Magnets have a tendency to mess with things like tube tvs (I know most people don't even have these anymore) or pacemakers or hard drives ....

save the porn foundation.
i hope this works out though, it'd be pretty awesome to be able to utilize this and not have to worry about those outlet plugs changing in foreign countries (not hard to get an adapter, but still wireless would be easier :D)

[Darus Grey]

Old...so old...It's like I'm living in the 1800s!

Though someone beat me to the fact that Tesla theorized and experimented with this technology a century ago.

This technology is really cool as long as the magnetic field is not strong enough to actually effect anything, Magnets have a tendency to mess with things like tube tvs (I know most people don't even have these anymore) or pacemakers or hard drives ....

Animals too, magnetic fields have a way of effecting animals(including humans) in ways we don't really understand yet. We take for granted the earth's magnetic field, when you start screwing with it(by having a stronger field) weird stuff starts going down.

[zoobernut]

You are right Darus I completely forgot many bird species as well as other animals navigate during migration by the magnetic field of the earth, and many species of animals in the ocean are extremely sensitive to changes in electro-magnetic fields and use it to detect other animals and move around.

I can see it now we perfect the technology but the transition towers are taking down birds all over.

Nicola Tesla is one of the most under-rated fascinating scientists. He invented so many cool things. It sad that so many people credit Edison with inventing electricity or harnessing it and they barely teach anything about Tesla in schools and yet Edison only worked with DC while Tesla was the one who pioneered AC which is what we actually use in houses.

[Octavious]

Motherfuck.... I came up with this idea like 8 years ago, and people laughed at me and said I was stupid.

I know it was said a few posts ago, but I would like to meet you Mr.Tesla.

On Topic, I don't think this type of thing would make it out to the general public to use for quite some time. There's a LOT that needs to be considered before we start shooting fucking energy across palces, lol. I don't want to be micro-fried on the way home from work one day.

[Darus Grey]

Very true, Tesla is my personal Hero(we have a statue of him here in Niagara Falls, and my father(an EE) personally worked with him on the Niagara power project), but to Edison's credit, AC well practical for the time, was very short-sighted, and as a society you'll see us slowly transition back to DC power.

[zoobernut]

I think that we are where we will go with respect to AC vs. DC power. It is impractical and impossible to transmit large amounts of power long distances with DC as the transmission loss is too great that is why we use AC. and AC does not work well in small circuit boards and electronics that is why most things have AC -> DC adapters.

Edison did do great things with DC power however we still need AC to get the power to our houses.

[Neosutra]

Very true, Tesla is my personal Hero(we have a statue of him here in Niagara Falls, and my father(an EE) personally worked with him on the Niagara power project), but to Edison's credit, AC well practical for the time, was very short-sighted, and as a society you'll see us slowly transition back to DC power.

Actually no, the transduction of mechanical energy to electrical via generators is far more reliable and renewable than chemical DC components. If anything we will just see better and smaller transduceion techniques.

[Scrythe]

What would this do to bank cards and the like, I know i've demagnitized mine just by keeping it with my cell phone, god knows what would happen with magnetic fields being pushed all over the place.

[Darus Grey]

What would this do to bank cards and the like, I know i've demagnitized mine just by keeping it with my cell phone, god knows what would happen with magnetic fields being pushed all over the place.

The future for credit cards and such is RFID tags which would be unaffected by anything but the strongest magnetic fields(which will effect anything if it's strong enough, being one of the four primal forces of the universe and all!)

Actually no, the transduction of mechanical energy to electrical via generators is far more reliable and renewable than chemical DC components. If anything we will just see better and smaller transduceion techniques.

What are you talking about? your comment is implying that you think the principle source of DC power(that would be powering your home, not your ipod) is chemical, aka battery. Now I hope I'm reading that wrong cause that's...uninformed to put it nicely.

DC power is more efficient in virtually every way than AC with the single exception of transmission lengths. Most major corporate facilities, manufacturing plants, and tech companies are powered *entirely* on DC(ever heard of Google?). DC can create much more powerful mechanical power(i.e. automobile engines and above) per unit of energy, this is why large facilities use them, because it uses much less electricity for the same amount of power. You can sure as hell generate DC power efficiently from a mechanical generator without any AC/DC inversion going on, which is what you're implying you can't do.

Current estimates in HVDC(high voltage) suggests that the maximum theoretical length you can transmit DC power is actually hundreds of times higher than AC, and in the world of electrical engineers a lot of research is going into this method to make it viable(two of my brothers, both EE PhDs are working on it now).

If everything in the U.S. ran on DC power we'd only need to generate about 1/3 of the power we currently do.

[Sigi]

Perhaps as solar-cell technology is refined and cheapened, we can transition to DC facilities. The problem is we function on a grid system with a centralized power source long distances away from the usage. So facilities that HAVE their own generators onsite can function on pure DC, however Joe Blow in his trailer is SOL. *shrug* Until everyone generates their own current, it's more efficient to use AC.