"Where is the nearest Wi-Pow Hot Spot?
The battery life on my laptop is terrible. Not three hours, not two hours, not even an hour; no, my laptop can generally hum along for about 35 minutes before it runs out of juice. The obvious side effect of my battery’s lack of stamina is my continual need to be tethered to an AC outlet. Whether at the airport, the coffee shop, or at home, I’ve developed an eagle eye when it comes to spotting the elusive wall outlet.
This dependence on stationary electricity is one reason I was so intrigued by Intel’s latest demonstration of wireless power. At the Intel Developer Forum event in San Francisco, a team led by Intel CTO Justin Rattner unveiled two coils of copper wires. Attached to one was a light bulb. When activated, one of the two magnetic coils could wirelessly transmit electricity to the other, powering the light bulb.
Visions of a battery-less world are already dancing across my mind, but the technology still has a ways to go. Currently, the Intel device’s energy transfer efficiency hovers around 75%, and the range is only two to three feet. Others have had better luck; researchers from MIT unveiled similar technology last year, and claimed the ability to transfer energy at 90% efficiency within a six foot range.
The current form of the technology is also a bit unwieldy. If you look at the picture in this Scientific American blog you can see that the coils are quite large, somewhere around two feet in diameter.
Nit-picking aside, it is easy to imagine the potential of this technology. Power “hot-spots” could be set up in your home and public places, powering electronic devices and computers. From a pure convenience point-of-view, the appeal of this technology is extraordinary. The days of hauling around that cell-phone charger could soon be long gone.
Wireless Power also has the ability to redefine how our workplaces are designed. Free of the hindrance of power cords, printers, PCs, copy machines and any other office-device could be placed anywhere. More efficient, worker-friendly layouts could be introduced, improving employee satisfaction and productivity.
As a society we seem to be headed in a wireless direction—wireless internet, wireless power. “Freedom from wires” seems to be a latent consumer desire. Over the next few years it will be interesting to see how much of the potential of technologies like wireless power is actually harnessed.
Believe it or not, a similar technology was rumored to have existed about a hundred years ago. Check out the Tesla entry at Wikipedia.
