University of Michigan researchers unveil wireless 'charging room' system that powers phones, laptop

[634-5789]

ANN ARBOR – Imagine a world with no charging cables that keep our devices tethered to power outlets.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Tokyo have invented a system that they say safely delivers electricity through the air. Their vision? To potentially bring wireless charging zones to entire buildings.

Using magnetic fields, the new technology can transfer up to 50 watts of power, according to the study published in Nature Electronics.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/all-about-ann-arbor/2021/08/30/university-of-michigan-researchers-unveil-wireless-charging-room-system-that-powers-phones-laptops/#//

[GPV]

1. Intriguing!

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. Not sure how much I want to be in such a room, but the idea is neat ...

Also rather doubt the energy efficiency is nearly as good as plugging in.

[Srkdqltr]

3. I'm not any kind of expert but I have always thought electricity transmission should be wireless.

I'm sure someone is working on it somewhere. With high winds and storms it would be useful.

[sdfernando]

4. This is not new

see Nikola Tesla

[634-5789]

6. It was sure as hell new to me!

Been waiting for this for a long time.

[jmowreader]

8. This would be similar to his Colorado Springs experiments

In 1899 Tesla set up a lab in Colorado Springs to experiment with electricity at high altitudes. Tesla believed he could transmit electricity by vibrating the earth, so not sure what altitude had to do with it, but anyway…there were lights outside the lab, and one day he noticed they came on during the day when he was using his induction coil. He believed the coil was vibrating the earth through the walls, which made the lights come on. It was actually that he had a 45-foot-diameter induction coil in there and the huge magnetic field was doing it.

[sdfernando]

9. I was thinking more along the lines of the Wardenclyffe Tower

This was way back in 1901!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower

[jmowreader]

10. Wardenclyffe was never going to get done because the principle was wrong

Since Tesla thought electricity was a mechanical force, he drilled a 300-foot shaft under the tower and built tunnels leading out from it to hold the resonating elements he was going to “make the earth quiver” from. (The big steel tower was his return path…his customers would have needed a reception device with an antenna on top to complete the circuit.)

One of Tesla’s major problems was he was crazier than Donald Trump. Another one was he was as interested in paying his bills as Trump: he lost both the Colorado Springs lab and Wardenclyffe to foreclosure, and he was evicted from several hotels for nonpayment before George Westinghouse found out about it and paid his hotel bills for the rest of his life. If you’d like to stay in Tesla’s final rooms, they are 3327 and 3328 at the New Yorker hotel. It’ll cost $200 to $300 a night to stay there, and there’s a waiting list for those two rooms.

Fun fact: Tesla didn’t believe radio waves would bend around the curvature of the earth, so when Marconi managed to transmit Morse from Europe to the US using a grounded Tesla coil - the only way to generate RF at the time because the vacuum tube hadn’t been invented yet - Tesla decided Marconi was using earth resonance too.

My favorite electrical pioneer was Oliver Shallenberger, who worked for Westinghouse. He was extremely important in electricity because he invented, among other things, the electrical meter. And strangely enough, until someone invented the digital meter Shallenberger’s invention was never improved - his accurate mechanical meter was perfect just the way it was. He also invented the idea of putting transformers in street lighting, and built whole systems this way. I also like Oskar Heil, who invented the velocity-modulated tube used to generate microwave frequencies (the traveling-wave tube used in satellites is based on the Heil tube, and the Varian brothers’ klystron tube is similar to it) and the field-effect transistor your computer is full of.

[multigraincracker]

5. In the mean time....

Will it charge up my pacemaker?

[surrealAmerican]

7. That would be the "killer app" for this technology...

... hopefully figuratively - not literally.