Shades of Tesla...

Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Electric Vehicles, Electrical Engineering, Jobs, Nicola Tesla

The Old

University of Illinois student Steve Ward and Fermilab senior technician Jeff Larson developed twin Tesla coils capable of emitting 12 feet (4 meters) of sparks.
Credit: Fermilab

Among his numerous innovations, Nikola Tesla dreamed of creating a way to supply power to the world without stringing wires across the globe. The inventor came close to accomplishing this when his "mad scientist" experiments with electricity led to his creation of the Tesla coil.

The first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity, the Tesla coil was a truly revolutionary invention. Early radio antennas and telegraphy used the invention, but variations of the coil can also do things that are just plain cool — like shoot lightning bolts, send electric currents through the body and create electron winds. [1]

The New

Stanford scientists have created a device that wirelessly transmits electricity to a movable disc. The technology could some day be used to charge moving electric vehicles and personal devices. Credit: Sid Assawaworrarit/Stanford University

If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.

Now Stanford University scientists have overcome a major hurdle to such a future by wirelessly transmitting electricity to a nearby moving object. Their results are published in the June 15 edition of Nature.

"In addition to advancing the wireless charging of vehicles and personal devices like cellphones, our new technology may untether robotics in manufacturing, which also are on the move," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the study. "We still need to significantly increase the amount of electricity being transferred to charge electric cars, but we may not need to push the distance too much more."

The group built on existing technology developed in 2007 at MIT for transmitting electricity wirelessly over a distance of a few feet to a stationary object. In the new work, the team transmitted electricity wirelessly to a moving LED lightbulb. That demonstration only involved a 1-milliwatt charge, whereas electric cars often require tens of kilowatts to operate. The team is now working on greatly increasing the amount of electricity that can be transferred, and tweaking the system to extend the transfer distance and improve efficiency. [2]

"What's past is prologue." William Shakespeare

1. Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works, Kelly Dickerson, Live Science
2. Wireless charging of moving electric vehicles overcomes major hurdle, Sid Assawaworrarit et al, Phys.org

Tesla Reborn...

Charge it: An iPhone in an Energous case gets a charge from the transmitter in the background.

...an appropriate application, seeing he predicted the mobile phone in 1909:

“Do you want us to charge your phone?” George Holmes asks. Normally, that would be an odd question. But Holmes is the vice president of sales and marketing for Energous, a company that is developing technology called WattUp that will allow you to charge smartphones, tablets, and other small gadgets from across a room without wires.

Energous hopes other companies will license this technology and build it into all kinds of products and places, so you can easily power your iPad while sitting on the couch browsing Instagram, or top off your phone while buying a coffee or playing Candy Crush in an airport. It will face competition, however, from a startup called Witricity that uses a different method, and already has the backing of some major electronics companies.

For now, WattUp’s technology is still in the demo stage, which means it’s not very good-looking. But it works, and during a visit to my San Francisco office, Holmes wants to show it off.

MIT Technology Review: Wireless Power from Across the Room
Nikola Tesla:
Global Wireless Energy Transmission for Telecommunications and Other Purposes

Edison's Last Jam...

Good Technology

la vengeance se mange très-bien froide, or "revenge is very good eaten cold." Khan Noonian Singh in Wrath of Khan quotes "revenge is a dish best served cold," is alas not from the Klingons, but the 1841 French novel Mathilde by Marie Joseph Eugène Sue (Wikipedia)

In the late 19th century, two competing electricity systems jostled for dominance in electric power distribution in the United States and much of the industrialized world. Alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) were both used to power devices like motors and light bulbs, but they were not interchangeable.

A battle for the grid emerged from the Apple and Microsoft of the Gilded Age. Thomas Edison, who invented many devices that used DC power, developed the first power transmission systems using this standard. Meanwhile, AC was pushed by George Westinghouse and several European companies that used Nikola Tesla's inventions to step up current to higher voltages, making it easier to transmit power over long distances using thinner and cheaper wires.

The rivalry was fraught with acrimony and publicity stunts -- like Edison electrocuting an elephant to show AC was dangerous -- but AC eventually won out as the standard for transmission, reigning for more than a century.

When we visited the Architectural Engineering Department at North Carolina A and T, Dr. Singh (absolutely no relation to Ricardo Montaban's fictional character, but an interesting aside), spoke to my son of "off-grid" buildings, self-sufficient and generating their own power. I see this as a part of the effort towards energy independency.

However, It is my sincerely hope that no elephant is injured in this latest incarnation of DC power.

Scientific American: Edison's Revenge - Will DC Make a Comeback in the US?