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Posted By: ITO The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 01:35 PM
Ironically one of my favorite lines to tell obnoxious GCs is, "As soon as you figure out how to beam the electricity to your devices, you, wont need me".

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"The end of the plug? Scientists invent wireless device that beams electricity through your home
by DAVID DERBYSHIRE - More by this author » Last updated at 12:31pm on 8th June 2007

Comments Comments (37)
Scientists have sounded the death knell for the plug and power lead.

In a breakthrough that sounds like something out of Star Trek, they have discovered a way of 'beaming' power across a room into a light bulb, mobile phone or laptop computer without wires or cables.

In the first successful trial of its kind, the team was able to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb 7ft away.

The team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who call their invention 'WiTricity', believe it could change the way we use electricity and do away with the tangle of cables, plugs and chargers that clutter modern homes.

It could also allow the use of laptops and mobile phones without batteries.

The inspiration came when the lead researcher, Dr Marin Soljacic, was standing in his kitchen at night staring at his mobile phone.

"It was probably the sixth time that month that I was awakened by my cell phone beeping to let me know that I had forgotten to charge it. It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging," he said.

To turn this dream into reality, Dr Soljacic needed a way of transmitting power wirelessly.

Scientists have known for nearly two centuries that it is possible to transfer an electrical current from one coil of wire to another without them touching.

The phenomenon, called electromagnetic induction, is used in power transformers and electric motors around the world.

However, the coils in motors and transformers have to be close for power to pass from one to another. Attempting to transfer power over distances is impossible.

The breakthrough came when Dr Soljacic realised there was another way of transferring energy through the air.

Rather than sending power from a transmitter to a receiver as a conventional electromagnetic wave - the same form of radiation as light, radio waves and microwaves - he could use the transmitter to fill a room with a 'non-radiative' electromagnetic field.

Most objects in the room - such as people, desks and carpets - would be unaffected by the electromagnetic field. But any objects designed to resonate with the electromagnetic field would absorb the energy.

It sounds complicated, but the result demonstrated by the American team this month was a dramatic success. Using two coils of copper, the team transmitted power 7ft through the air to a light bulb, which lit up instantly.

The scientists say the technique works only over distances of up to 9ft. However, they believe it could be used to charge up a battery within a few yards of the power source connected to a receiving coil.

Placing one source in each room could provide enough power for an entire house.

The receiver and transmitter would not have to be in view of each other.

Professor Peter Fisher, another of the researchers, said: "As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of wireless power, it would charge automatically without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside such a room."

The researchers believe there is little to worry about on safety grounds, saying that magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms and are unlikely to have any serious side effects.

Dr Soljacic said: "When my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents' house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset asking, 'Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?' That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world.

"Hopefully we will be getting rid of some more wires and batteries soon."

Posted By: ghost307 Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 04:19 PM
Tesla originally developed the concept of wireless power many years ago.
Edison killed it for the same reason that someone will kill it again.

If there are no wires...how do you meter it and send bills??
Posted By: Retired_Helper Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 10:11 PM
Originally Posted by ghost307
If there are no wires...how do you meter it and send bills??


Possibly the way televisions were (are?) licensed in Britain. Part honor system, part portable sensing unit looking for users who don't subscribe. smirk

By the way, Ghost, thank you for remembering Nikola Tesla.

confused Didn't they used to tune into "power broadcasts" in BUCK ROGERS?
Posted By: Theelectrikid Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 10:16 PM
There's an REM song that covers this, but I've posted it som many times I'd lose my membership if I did again. laugh

Ian A.
Posted By: Retired_Helper Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 10:20 PM
"It's the end of the world as we know it /
And I feel fine." laugh
Posted By: TwinCitySparky Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 11:42 PM
Using two coils of copper, the team transmitted power 7ft through the air to a light bulb, which lit up instantly.

Sounds like we'll still be slingin the wire...

Posted By: ITO Re: The end of the plug? - 06/08/07 11:53 PM
That what it sounds like to me too, you would still have the wire the coil and that could be metered.
Posted By: LK Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 12:18 AM
Yes, if it were possible, it would be metered, and it is nothing new to get excited about, it was printed in publication that also interviews flying saucer visitors, wireless power transmission, has been around for many years, in the past they have tried pulse transmision, frequency chopping, and just about every type of wave guide you can imagine. The Dr that thinks he hit on something new, has to cut down on his coffee, and stop puffing the weed. I would not be in a hurry to scrap any cable in the near future.
Posted By: trollog Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 07:18 AM
"Breakthrough"? "New"?

where's that pic of the 4' fluorescent
tubes being lit by mere proximity to HV distribution towers when you need it.. and I daresay it works at more than 9'....

ECN newsflash-

Yes, and I have an invention that will revolutionize transportation. It's called the wheel


n a breakthrough that sounds like something out of Star Trek, they have discovered a way of 'beaming' power across a room into a light bulb, mobile phone or laptop computer without wires or cables.

In the first successful trial of its kind, the team was able to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb 7ft away.
Posted By: iwire Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 11:11 AM
Well I thought this was a joke, I was apparently wrong.

I did some more checking and found that the research was done at MIT. I went to MIT's own site and found their side of it.

In my opinion the original link exaggerated the potential a bit, it appears they are thinking of low power items.

"MIT team experimentally demonstrates wireless power transfer, potentially useful for powering laptops, cell phones without cords"

Here is the MIT News story with more technical details.

Goodbye wires…
Posted By: pauluk Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 11:19 AM
I wonder what frequencies they plan on using and what the efficiency would be like?

There was a story a good many years ago about a guy who lived in the shadow of a powerful broadcast transmitter and had erected coils all over the house to pick up the R.F. to power lighting. I think it was Switzerland somewhere, or perhaps it was the old RTL A.M. transmitter (Radio Luxembourg at one time in the early 1980s used to boast of "One million, three hundred thousand watts of power!").

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Possibly the way televisions were (are?) licensed in Britain.


Are. frown
Posted By: gfretwell Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 05:26 PM
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where's that pic of the 4' fluorescent
tubes being lit by mere proximity to HV distribution towers when you need it.. and I daresay it works at more than 9'...


I really believe that is a hoax. Ny boat lift is virtually directly under a 250kv power line, actually in the FPL right of way and I haven't been able to even get a perceptible glow in an F40 tube. I tried everything I have heard to do it too. Long wire antennas, coils or whatever.
If you have a scheme I will try it tho.
Posted By: LK Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 07:05 PM
none of it is a hoax, it's just a bit over the edge to use "End of Plugs" ? as a headline. RF can easly light up a lamp, depending on the power level of the transmitter, Go to the MIT site, and you will see they were talking about low power transfer using frequency control, not a new concept, but they may of found a unique way to transmit it.
Posted By: Trumpy Re: The end of the plug? - 06/09/07 10:28 PM
Great,
Just what we need, more interference on an already messy spectrum. shocked
Posted By: Able Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 03:53 AM
The efficiency is about forty percent so far.
Resonant frequencies everywhere is not the best of ideas IMO.
Posted By: yaktx Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 05:08 AM
Originally Posted by ghost307
Tesla originally developed the concept of wireless power many years ago.
Edison killed it for the same reason that someone will kill it again.

If there are no wires...how do you meter it and send bills??


Edison didn't kill it. J.P. Morgan did. Edison and Tesla had parted ways many years earlier. That's the story, anyway, the conspiracy theory. Tesla made a lot of claims that were unverified, and this is one of them.
Posted By: JoeTestingEngr Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 06:47 AM
If you think about it, we have transmitted power for decades. What's new is micro power devices that can rectify it and self power. Consider the solar powered calculator that wouldn't be around without LCDs and CMOS showing up to replace LEDs and TTL. Those transponders that you use to go through I-Pass or EZPass lanes are (probably) self powered field disturbance devices. It's the decimal point shift in power requirements from amps and milliamps to microamps or nanoamps that can make transmitting power practical.
Now before you all run out to my old 2 million watt TV transmitter with your magnet wire and ultra-fast recovery diodes, remember that the number is Effective Radiated Power. We only pushed 121 KW combined up the wave guide. The amount of that you could actually harvest would depend on that old, inconvenient,"varies inversely with the square of the distance" rule. Then, if you have to focus it into a narrow beam to get any use out of it, and have to stay in one place, you might as well put a duplex there.
Joe
Posted By: e57 Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 07:24 AM
Originally Posted by iwire
I did some more checking and found that the research was done at MIT. I went to MIT's own site and found their side of it. (~)exaggerated the potential a bit,


C'mon Bob, These are the same people who rig the 'solar car' race every year - for the last 20! They cruise the same frat car every year that looks like a cockroach, that has two 'barney' Lance Armstrong wanna-bees peddling away in, on old bike parts. (Time tested design - Phsuff - right?!?) Sure they only needed to peddle to get it started... Go up hill, or any other time solar wasnt doing it's magic.... Great science school, had two roommates who went there who were geek-tastic.... But its a school and culture with a tendency to over-blow the unfeasible.
Posted By: iwire Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 09:06 AM
Mark at no point in this thread have I said if I think it is or is not feasible.

All I did was supply a link to the source of this research bypassing third and forth hand reports.

Each person can read it and make their own decision.

As far as MIT...well of course they are likely to blow their own horn...what institution does not?

That said, a lot of great science does come out of MIT.

Where this particular research leads remains to be seen.
Posted By: Alan Belson Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 12:11 PM
It may well be feasible, but I take to task the notion that....

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magnetic fields interact weakly with living organisms and are unlikely to have any serious side effects.


Tell that to beekeepers near a mobile phone mast.

Alan





Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 02:46 PM
Alan, could you elaborate on the bees and phone mast ..
Posted By: gfretwell Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 04:31 PM
There is a theory that cell towers are screwing up the bees homing abilities so they can't find the hive ... or they are just getting killed by mites.
The only fact is there is a decline in bee populations.
Posted By: Alan Belson Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 05:07 PM
Honey bees travel up to a mile from the hive, quite a distance for a small animal.
Scale equivalent to 80? miles for a human. They know where they are and where the hive is, because they have a built in 'magnetic compass'. Coupled to this, they also know the time of day using polarised daylight, so can compute lattitude and longitude. Nearer the hive they have to use sight to locate the exact entry point of course. Mobile phone masts do give out radio waves that bees can detect and which may possibly impare their homing abilitiies. Many beekeepers say populations in hives do suffer near masts. On the other hand, as long as the mast gives out a constant signal, a fresh bunch of new bees would still have a fixed reference, provided the signals caused no other physiological damage. Bees only forage for about 3 weeks in summer before their wings wear out.
The veroa mite is indeed a serious bee pest world wide. As the climate is warming, we are also getting here giant bee-hunting wasps coming up from southern France and Italy. Great!

Alan
Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 08:07 PM
what I know about bees could fit in a thimble, but I know they are quite necessary, and leave them and other flying things alone. they are the primary reason I don't use chemicals around our little place... and enjoy watching them in the spring weaving about the apple and cherry blossoms ....lately I have noticed a few here and there, just not as many. I did read about the mitesa few years ago, but figured that was under control...and now this hooey about cell phones.!
Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 08:11 PM
Thanks Alan, I was just sitting here wondering why this problem has popped up only recently, since cell phones have been around for a loooong time now and I happen to live in a dead zone for signal strength.. maybe the bees around here are not affected.

does this problem apply to all bees or just honeybees ?
Posted By: Kenbo Re: The end of the plug? - 06/10/07 10:52 PM
Originally Posted by ghost307
Tesla originally developed the concept of wireless power many years ago.
Edison killed it for the same reason that someone will kill it again.

If there are no wires...how do you meter it and send bills??


A bit more detail on Tesla

There was a post on this forum (I looked but could not find it) about a man who built his house too close to over headlines so was getting electric shocks for his building. Obviously eddy-currents induced by the electromagnetic fields of the lines, and was he not trying to claim from the Power Company for his own stupidity ? In fact if I remember was there not a photo of him holding a flourecent tube which was lit due to the EMF?
Posted By: gfretwell Re: The end of the plug? - 06/11/07 02:55 AM
That guy is the one I was referring to as a hoax. If I could really get a flourecent to light under a power line from the EMF there would be some going in my boat house right now. It just won't happen
Posted By: Alan Belson Re: The end of the plug? - 06/11/07 07:08 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/16/nbees16.xml

Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/11/07 12:40 PM
cripes, what's next ?

Thanks again, Alan
Posted By: Gloria Re: The end of the plug? - 06/11/07 12:45 PM
That's why I love black-outs so much...
Posted By: yaktx Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 02:16 AM
How long does an individual honeybee live, and what is their breeding interval? Seems to me, if cell phones were the cause, we should have been seeing this a decade ago.
Posted By: yaktx Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 02:49 AM
Originally Posted by Kenbo
A bit more detail on Tesla


No one will deny that Tesla was a genius. I stand in awe of everything that he gave us. IMO, the reason he is not better known is that Americans don't admire a genius per se; we admire a genius who can make a buck off his smarts and retire a billionaire (or, back then, a millionaire). Tesla was foolish with money, in a way that Edison was not.

Even so, it has been over a century since J.P. Morgan killed Tesla's Wardenclyffe project. It was not just Tesla's fantastic claim of inventing wireless power transmission, nor his flippant dismissal of Morgan's question of where to put the meter. Morgan had been concerned for some time about Tesla's money pit on Long Island, and his inability to explain its purpose. In 1904, no one knew what to make of a "World Broadcasting Center"; even those who understood the new development of radio technology conceived of it as wireless telegraphy: a means of point-to-point transmission. The world would take another two decades to catch on to the real implications.

There have been countless other geniuses since Tesla. If Tesla really was on to wireless transmission of power in 1904, why hasn't anyone else picked it up until "now"?

BTW, 40% transmission efficiency is dismal!
Posted By: gfretwell Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 06:09 AM
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BTW, 40% transmission efficiency is dismal!


Has anyone come up with what the utility is doing in this. What percentage of electricity that gets generated actually makes it to the meter?
Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 10:09 AM
Hmm, candles and Slivovitz ??
smile
Posted By: Gloria Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 01:53 PM
Yup, first I got the cateye lamp of my bike, then I looked for a candle. Who's Slivovitz? :P
Posted By: togol Re: The end of the plug? - 06/12/07 02:11 PM
not who
.....plum brandy, from your southern neighbors

I still have a partial flask that was a gift from a Czech I worked with last year....
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