Wireless Electricity

Plugs and cables could become obsolete after scientists devised a way of recharging electrical devices ranging from laptop computers to lights from a distance.
Scientists have known for years that electricity can be transferred without wires, but had struggled to find a practical and efficient way of making it work.

The breakthrough, which has been dubbed WiTricity, was announced by the researchers in the online version of the journal Science. They believe they are between three and five years away from developing a system which could recharge laptops, mobile phones and other devices wirelessly. It could also mean some gadgets would no longer need batteries, eliminating the potential for pollution caused by discarded cells.

However, up to 45 per cent of the transmitted power was lost before it reached the lightbulb, and a system was needed that is twice as efficient before it would be as effective as chemical batteries. Also the copper transmitting coils were two feet high, although there was potential for miniaturising them.

If a single one-megaton nuclear warhead were exploded 300 miles over the center of the country, a high-voltage electromagnetic pulse would in theory disrupt communication and electrical systems all over the continental U.S. Gamma rays emitted by such an explosion would instantly strip away the electrons from air molecules in the upper atmosphere in roughly a circular, pancake-shaped zone. The free electrons would then accelerate radially with the earth’s magnetic field, separating from the heavier, positively charged ions and creating a downward directed high-voltage electromagnetic pulse. This in turn results in electrical surges in all exposed conductors on the ground.

History

When Nikola Tesla discovered alternating current (AC) electricity, he had great difficulty convincing men of his time to believe in it. Thomas Edison was in favor of direct current (DC) electricity and opposed AC electricity strenuously. Tesla eventually sold his rights to his alternating current patents to George Westinghouse for $1,000,000. After paying off his investors, Tesla spent his remaining funds on his other inventions and culminated his efforts in a major breakthrough in 1899 at Colorado Springs by transmitting 100 million volts of high-frequency electric power wirelessly over a distance of 26 miles at which he lit up a bank of 200 light bulbs and ran one electric motor! With this souped up version of his Tesla coil, Tesla claimed that only 5% of the transmitted energy was lost in the process. But broke of funds again, he looked for investors to back his project of broadcasting electric power in almost unlimited amounts to any point on the globe. The method he would use to produce this wireless power was to employ the earth’s own resonance with its specific vibrational frequency to conduct AC electricity via a large electric oscillator. When J.P. Morgan agreed to underwrite Tesla’s project, a strange structure was begun and almost completed near Wardenclyffe in Long Island, N.Y. Looking like a huge lattice-like, wooden oil derrick with a mushroom cap, it had a total height of 200 feet. Then suddenly, Morgan withdrew his support to the project in 1906, and eventually the structure was dynamited and brought down in 1917.

A Tesla coil is a special transformer that can take the 110 volt electricity from your house and convert it rapidly to a great deal of high-voltage, high-frequency, low-amperage power. The high-frequency output of even a small Tesla coil can light up fluorescent tubes held several feet away without any wire connections. Even a large number of spent or discarded fluorescent tubes (their burned out cathodes are irrelevant) will light up if hung near a long wire running from a Tesla coil while using less than 100 watts drawn by the coil itself when plugged into an electrical outlet! Since the Tesla coil steps up the voltage to such a high degree, the alternating oscillations achieve sufficient excitations within the tubes of gases to produce lighting at a minimal expense of original power! Fluorescent tubes can be held under high-tension wires to produce the same lighting up effect.

Incandescent bulbs burn high resistance filaments that gobble up energy. Fluorescent tubes burn filaments (cathodes) to create an electrical flow that sets their internal phosphorus coatings aglow. Using a Tesla coil, high voltage AC can light up glass-enclosed vacuum bulbs coolly without any gases inside them at all! Any number of cold light bulbs can be lit using only one Tesla coil, and since there is nothing inside them to burn out, they can last indefinitely. It seems like a low cost form of street lighting, doesn’t it?

Today’s Story

Imagine a world where all your portable devices can be charged and powered simply by placing them on a desktop. Chip manufacturer MobileWise has gone well beyond imagining such a world and this week unveiled “a conductive solution” that it believes can make it all possible.

During a mid-day press conference in chilly New York City, MobileWise showed off a handful of functioning prototype powerbases and retrofitted mobile devices that all use the company’s new MobileWise chipset and enable “Wire-Free” electric power. One chip, the tiny Adapter Controller, goes inside the mobile device and the other, the Contact Controller, gets built into the power base station. These power bases, which were shown in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and colors, are each covered in an array of gold-plated contacts. The retrofitted mobile devices also have a pair of contracts. With properly configured handheld devices, the bases can, change any flat surface into a charging/power station.

MobileWise chipset

The patent-pending technology behind the MobileWise is, on the surface, quite simple. The adapter chip inside the handheld device will, when placed on a base station, receive a very small electrical signal and message from the base controller chip that will power up the adapter chip. The base controller chip will sense for polarity. If there is none (say you place your hand on the base) then it does nothing. If it does find polarity and then a signal from the adapter chip, it will then read information about the voltage level necessary to run the mobile device and begin charging and powering it. Because of the array of contacts—from dozens to hundreds, depending on base size—there’s no need to place the device in a special spot or position on the base. In fact, during the demonstration we saw the bases accept multiple devices, charging and powering them all at once.

The solution is not actually entirely “wire free”, however. The base station is plugged into an AC adapter and can deliver up to 30V DC to an individual device. It’s also, according to Goren, completely safe, and if any charge were delivered to a person, it would be at the level of a low-voltage battery, virtually imperceptible to humans and certainly not harmful, he added. The final base units will also, he said, be waterproof and protected from electrostatic charges.
Mobile Phone On Base

Despite calls for MobileWise to manufacture the bases, Goren said the company plans instead on delivering the chipsets to partners who will likely build the adapter chip and proper contacts into their products and OEM the power base manufacturing to another company. MobileWise showed a variety of colors and form factors for the bases.
Mobile Phone Off Base

Acer has already partnered with MobileWise and, according to Goren, may ship a MobileWise-enabled notebook by Q1 of next year. But MobileWise has, it seems, even more intriguing plans on the horizon. The company is already in discussion with a couple of major office furniture manufacturers to build the power array bases and controller chips into furniture. Apparently, these bases are for more than just mobile devices. Properly-equipped televisions, lamps and more could be powered by the bases—Goren even had an HDTV that worked with one of the larger ones. Later next year, MobileWise expects to add data handshake capabilities to the chipset, allowing, once the signal is split, data delivery over the same contacts.

While no shipping units currently exist, MobileWise said the adapter chips run roughly $1.25 a piece adding, it said, just a few dollars in manufacturing costs to mobile devices and the base stations could, in units of 100,000 cost roughly $11 to manufacturers. Goren said he expects a mid-sized base (roughly 12 by 18 inches) to sell for $160 street. Not every mobile device will have to be retrofitted, by the way. MobileWise says it expects to see a handful of aftermarket mobile device adapters available sometime next year, as well.