Very soon you will be able to power up your laptops and cell phones without plugging them into an electrical socket by a new technique, Wireless Power Transmission. Intel has tested wireless power transmission which is becoming more viable.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, Intel Corp. on Thursday demonstrated how to make a 60-watt light bulb glow from an energy source 3 feet away. The efficiency is quite high of about 75 per cent losing only a quarter of the energy the researchers started with.
“That to me is the most striking part about it — transmitting 60 watts at 75 percent efficiency over several feet,” Intel’s chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, said in an interview.
“The power pack for your laptop isn’t that efficient … it’s one of those things that are almost too good to be true.”
Researchers working on the concept for a decade get some success over their efforts. But it needs a long way to go before coming in market. Wireless transmission is based on basic physics that electric coils resonating at the same frequency can transmit energy to each other at a distance. In both the MIT and the Intel work, researchers used charging coils far too large for wide-scale use. One of the big challenges in transmitting wireless power is preventing too much energy from escaping while in transit.
Even so, Rattner said Intel is in the early stages of trying to modify a laptop to accept wireless power. One challenge is figuring out how to prevent the electromagnetic field from interfering with the computer’s other parts, he said.
You will be able to attach a large transmitter to a wall — or even bury it inside the wall — and plant many smaller receivers inside nearby tables and chairs and other pieces of furniture, creating the ultimate in recharging convenience.
MIT physics professor Marin Soljacic told that researchers have many new ideas to implement the technology including the possibility of wirelessly powering pacemakers and artificial hearts.
The MIT researchers call the technology “WiTricity,” a combination of “wireless” and “electricity,”. Earlier, they had lit their bulb from 7 feet away with larger charging coils and between 40 percent to 45 percent efficiency. But when the distance is reduced to 3 feet, efficiency was 90 per cent that is much better than the Intel demo.
