Wireless Power Transmission Becoming Viable?
Don’t know about you, but my home theater rack and PC desk are a rat’s nest of cabling that include joysticks, keyboards, mice, speakers, Ethernet, phone cords, USB, Firewire, and a variety of power strips, with a plethora of power cables (many of which have their own transformers and different plug sizes) all tangled with one another.
I’ve always dreamed of a wireless world where you simply put the device where you want it and it just works. There have been some good steps in that direction with the advent of wireless peripherals, and I’m looking forward to high-bandwidth wireless technologies that will allow the equivalent of wireless video/audio connections such as HDMI. But until recently, it didn’t appear there was a viable solution for wireless electricity to power those devices.
The New York Times recently reported that Intel engineers have demonstrated a prototype wireless power solution that may eventually deliver on the dream. To quote:
On Thursday, the chip maker plans to demonstrate the use of a magnetic field to broadcast up to 60 watts of power two to three feet. It says it can do that losing only 25 percent of the power in transmission.
“Something like this technology could be embedded in tables and work surfaces,” said Justin Rattner, Intel’s chief technology officer, “so as soon as you put down an appropriately equipped device it would immediately begin drawing power.”
60 watts may not seem like a lot, especially to power-hungry desktop PC users, but it’s plenty to recharge the battery in a laptop, mobile phone, game controller, keyboard, mouse, speaker, etc. Imagine a world where your device is always fully-charged simply by virtue of your having been sitting and working at a continual power tap! I suspect this could even work with more power-hungry devices (such as a desktop PC or home theater equipment such as an amp) with attached battery storage. Not as elegant, but who knows? Perhaps they’ll be able to advance the technology so it can support these heavy-load devices?
Just to be clear, this was a tech demo at Intel’s IDF (Intel Development Forum) event, and is certainly nowhere near a shipping product yet. However, Intel never shows off anything without reason, and I certainly wish them well in trying to deliver a cost-effective, safe solution for the home and office.
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David Gerard