Remember Intel’s Wireless Power presentation back in August? They managed to improve on earlier work by MIT and power a 60 watt light globe from between 3 to 6 feet. Now, wireless power transmission has taken another leap forward after Lightning Lab accidentally transferred a large amount of energy while testing a high-frequency transformer.
The Navada Lightning Laboratory (aka Lightning Lab) noticed another transformer across the lab beginning to “smoke profusely” during the test. They found the transformer was physically disconnected from its power source and set out to try and learn what had happened.
They discovered that even widely spaced coils were capable of wirelessly transmitting large amounts of power and to test it out, they rigged up a board of twenty 40W light globes with the transmitter and receiver 5 meters (16.4ft) apart. The image above shows the board lit by 775W from the receiver.
The major drawback, as is always the case with wireless power transmission, is the amount of energy lost during the process. The transmitting coil was operating at 3.6KW for the receiver to capture the 800W, which is quite inefficient.
The team do not plan to pursue patents for their discovery, as it was based on earlier work by Nikola Tesla 100 years ago.
Check out the project’s paper for more information, plus, as usual, electric commentary on Slashdot.
Sources:
Lightning Lab via Slashdot