Marin Solja?i? couldn’t sleep. The problem was his wife’s Nokia cell phone. The tyrannical device beeped on the bedside table when it needed to be plugged in. It could not be disabled.
Instead of taking a hammer to the phone, Solja?i? marveled at the fact that this device, and billions of others like it, was sitting a few feet away from all the electricity it could ever need. Why couldn’t it receive power wirelessly, just as laptops get Wi-Fi?
A physics professor, Solja?i? dug into the problem and learned that if you could get two magnetic fields to resonate — to sing the same note, in effect — they could transfer an electric current. With two large magnetic coils, he found a way to throw 60 watts across a room, powering a lightbulb. MIT, his employer, quickly patented the technology and encouraged Solja?i?to start a company.
WiTricity’s 15 employees are hard at work proving that Solja?i?’s magnetic coils can power almost any electrical device. Most of the company’s potential customers have one major question: safety.
“There’s a real perceptual problem,” says CEO Eric Giler. “People think we’re putting electricity in the air, and that’s called lightning, and they know to stay away from that.”
In fact, the coils turn electricity into magnetic fields, then back into electricity. Magnetic fields interact weakly with humans; as far as the fields are concerned, we are no different from air. Giler makes a point of standing between the coils whenever he demonstrates the technology.
At the Nikkei electronics conference in Tokyo in October, he was able to power a 1,000-watt klieg light from across the room — a far cry from that 60-watt lightbulb in Solja?i?’s first experiment. “We’re going up the power curve,” he says. -Chris Taylor
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
very nice! Hope this turns into something we can all use!
December 6th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Will this interfere with those of us with metal in our bodies? For example, I have metal keeping my chest together as a result of surgery.
December 6th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
How about securing the field so that my neighbor can’t steal my electricity?
What about gadgets being inadvertently powered? For example, if you have a normal toaster in the same field, will that accidentally cause the field to leak through the toaster?
December 7th, 2009 at 2:20 am
Nicola Tesla did this same shit many years ago
December 9th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Tesla did this very thing 70 years ago.
December 9th, 2009 at 8:32 am
At the risk of echoing the last person, sorry I did not see your comment. I just responded instantly.
Tesla did so much in his life that “modern” tech. can’t explain.
Too bad the powers of big business shut him down.
December 9th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Yea and Tesla did this over miles with tons of light bulbs, Not this weak “across the room” 60 watt stuff.
December 10th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Sounds cool… but my gut feeling is efficiency must be a deal breaker. If you’re converting energy 2 or 3 times, what could the overall efficiency be? 1% or much less probably? Any real numbers on this?
December 30th, 2009 at 6:20 am
Actually…
It’s capitalizing on a physics phenomenon called “Evanescent Wave Coupling” (look it up sometime, it’s a trip). It relies on a transmitter and a receiver that both resonate at the same frequency. Unlike an antenna, which also uses resonance, evanescent wave coupling doesn’t rely on radiation to transmit energy (radiation consumes energy, regardless of whether or not a receiver exists). Instead, it relies on near-field wave coupling, which requires a receiver to draw any power. Notably, it requires a _resonant_ receiver, so most objects in the body shouldn’t present a problem (you should probably be careful with pacemakers though).
Efficiency is typically in the range of 80%.
January 2nd, 2010 at 6:07 am
Give it time and we wont need to worry about securing the power, once everyone has it going we will slowly start to move away from a society who worrys about paying for everything and move towards a society who makes out technology part of us, not just something we all use. I cant wait to see what the future holds.
January 2nd, 2010 at 6:33 pm
The “electricity is in the air” thing was what always made me stray away from ideas like this. Finally, someone explains it
January 5th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Nice one. Although I have had it for years: its called “magnetism”.
Take care and have a wonderful year. ( No, make that a wonderful life)
January 7th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
What about HDDs?
January 7th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
this is way overdue
January 7th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
They patented Nikolia Tesla’s invention? I guess corporations like MIT can get away with anything.
January 10th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
What happens to computer hard drives?
January 31st, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Hello, great point. Posts like this one are why I follow your blog. Have a great 2010!
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