Aug/093
Witricity
Everbody who has used any electric appliance has clearly noticed that they need to be plugged to a wall socket in one way or another - unless they run on batteries, which gives them some autonomous live, but sooner or later they will have to go back to the charger, which needs to be plugged to the wall.
Perhaps you have asked yourself why until now, when we live surrounded by wireless devices, nobody has thought replacing those annoying power cables with something less... in our way, like waves! The answer is clear: many people have actually though and developed ideas on this matter, in fact, as early as in the years between 1800 and 1900 there was good progress on systems to transmit power wirelessly.
The biggest issue to address when transmiting energy with no wires is trying in increase the efficiency of the process, this is, trying to reduce the amount of energy that is lost in heat and other factors while trasnmiting. To power a computer, a hoover or a hand blender, we need an ammount of energy far greater than the one we need when transmitting data using our wireless network, therefore the efficiency is very important factor to consider. Witricity is one of the recent companies that researches in this sector and that has been able to achieve about 45% efficiency in the last tests.
I saw it in ALT1040
August 4th, 2009
45% efficiency is obscenely inneficient, the different power girds around the world are vastly overworked; we have no energy left to spare.
Besides that, consider the fact that 45% is only achieved when perfectly aligned to the power source (a gigantic copper coil, 60cm in diameter), and no more than 2 meters appart (thats roughly 6 feet).
Greetings from Mexico.
-Arc
August 4th, 2009
Ole!!! Lets see if one day more sooner than later we can have this! I’m always making a mess with all the cables and wire and all… *^^*U
August 5th, 2009
Por supuesto, un 45% es absurdo como para plantearse el uso de este dispositivo a escala global. Muy bueno tu texto sobre el programa de la BBC: son expertos en sensacionalismo divulgativo. Saludos desde Londres y gracias!