Comments on: Sony’s wireless electricity offering

By: jason

jason — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:53:59 +0000

why not put this tech in a electric car and make your parking spot in your garage charge your electric car wireless, thats a little more convenient than a wireless tv

By: Einomies

Einomies — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:51:03 +0000

And secondly, because this system uses an alternating magnetic field to transmit the power, any largeish metallic or otherwise sufficiently conductive object nearby will experience eddy currents.

I would guess something as simple as a metal chair frame or an aluminium computer case closeby would start to heat up and sap a significant amount of power from the system, leading to even worse efficiency.

Careful to wear rings and bracelets around this bugger.

By: Einomies

Einomies — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:45:26 +0000

Frankly, this is just a neat party trick to fool investors.

It’s a resonant transformer with an air core. The technology is well known and understood, including the fact that because of the shape of the field, they’re only going to get good efficiency and power transmission when the two coils are on the same axis relative to one another.

That’s to say, if you move that topmost coil an inch to the left, the efficiency starts to suffer and the output power drops because the field is no longer symmetrical on the recieving coil.

The way it works, you simply can’t put the transmitter and the reciever in any arbitrary spot. It has to be almost exactly right, like pointing a satellite dish, which limits the usefulness of the system to few special applications.

By: Rober

Rober — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:09:40 +0000

Wow. I should probably read the post before commenting.

By: Rober

Rober — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:05:21 +0000

This is pretty well explained in a TED speech.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html

By: Sammy

Sammy — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:42:50 +0000

Somehow I don’t paricually want electricity flowing through me…

By: alvarez

alvarez — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:23:36 +0000

maybe not cancer but it is harmful.
lrn2bioligy

In Australia RFID(im not sure of the exact specs) is used to keep track of cattle in droves that are too large to fence.

The CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization) has done research into the effects of this and power lines on said cattle and a much lower mortality rate was noticed in cattle nearby to sources of such radiation. And shorter life span was theorized (being beef cattle this couldn’t be tested)

I cant find the article on the awful site atm, but considering humans have not been near such strong wireless signals for as long I expect to see medical complications in this generation.

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:06:06 +0000

No, it doesn’t cause cancer.

learn2physics

By: millBot

millBot — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:53:51 +0000

cool, wireless cancer!

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:36:11 +0000

wireless electricity was project of Nikola Tesla back in the ’20s, if I remember correctly, he wanted to make electricity world wide wireless and free of charge but guys like jp morgan, rockefeller and others just killed the guy and stopped/took Nikolas project.

By: Anonymouse

Anonymouse — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:30:17 +0000

That’s a really impressive resonant tank air-core transformer you got there, but please don’t try to patent it; the idea has been around for over 100 years.

By: Wynter

Wynter — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:13:49 +0000

“transfer using microwave radiation, sending up a satellite in “5-10 years” with a bunch of solar panels which will beam the energy down to a power station on earth. The problem with true radiative power transfer is that you have to focus the beam or the power will just kind of go everywhere and it will be very inefficient.”

And suddenly I have a vision of SimCity 2000 lol. They have Microwave Power Stations, and well… sometimes the beam, let’s just say “misses”. It would be like a giant laser cannon hitting the area near the power plant and wiping out everything in it’s path.

Sorry, I could not resist sharing that one, but in reality they are working on this in the real world right now.

By: RandomGuy

RandomGuy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:35:28 +0000

@cgmark: this is actually non-radiative, so it’s more like the inductive chargers. Japan is trying radiative power transfer using microwave radiation, sending up a satellite in “5-10 years” with a bunch of solar panels which will beam the energy down to a power station on earth. The problem with true radiative power transfer is that you have to focus the beam or the power will just kind of go everywhere and it will be very inefficient.

…and better yet, imagine integrating this on a chip (at a much higher frequency). No more soldering, just throw a bunch of chips into a suitable magnetic field, and you have a PC. Wireless power and RF for chip to chip communication.

By: cgmark

cgmark — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:31:32 +0000

There are some people who have done this but illegally. If you live near high tension power lines it is possible to place the proper coil of wire under the lines a foot or so off the ground and get power off the lines to run household items.

Power companies are aware of this and there are stiff penalties for anyone doing it.

By: RandomGuy

RandomGuy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:23:59 +0000

It’s basically this: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0611063v2
Most of what’s in those boxes are the coils. Also fwiw, the boxes work probably somewhere in the MHz range. Those frequencies are non-ionizing radiation, although these antennas are not meant to be radiative, per se, since this is a near-field effect, not a far-field one that you would traditionally associate with antennas.

On the up side, there was a paper recently about how magnetic fields can impair tumor angiogenesis, so maybe this will help stop cancer!