It's fascinating to think that while Edison and Tesla battled over the ascendancy of AC versus DC, most of the world didn't think this electricity thing was going to take off - I mean, who was going to spend trillions of dollars rolling out great coils of copper wire to bring this thing to the masses? Nikola Tesla was thinking along the same lines, and the Serbian genius's mysterious Wardenclyffe Tower was to be an experiment in beaming electricity wirelessly across the world, eliminating the need for a wired power grid altogether. But wireless electricity has been enjoying a cautious revival in the past decade - mainly at short distance and for reasonably trivial applications like charging cell phones and other battery-powered equipment. And as Eric Giler's great ten-minute demonstration at this year's TEDGlobal shows, wireless power seems very close to breaking through into the mainstream market.
Watch the presentation below, in which Eric Giler of WiTricity wirelessly powers a TV from a distance of some 2m (6.5ft), and then proceeds to charge Nokia, Apple and T-Mobile cell phones using very compact versions of the same technology:
So while it's still baby steps for unplugged devices and charging, the idea of this magnetically resonant, safe power transmission seems set to enter the home very soon.
But as Giler points out, batteries and wires suck - they're wasteful of materials, they have a very finite life-span and they're energy-inefficient to produce. So we're left to wonder (again) what might have been, if Nikola Tesla had succeeded in completing his Wardenclyffe tower - and several others like it around the world, which would create a large enough wireless power grid to completely render batteries unnecessary. Battery-free phones, electric cars and home ... the only question would be - how could you charge people for it?
This was the same problem that kept the funding from coming when Tesla was alive and able to troubleshoot any issues this system would have. But we have caught up with the marvel and have science in a position to make this happen.
So to answer the question you have to foresee the breadth of use and costs.
Either the state will manage this and charge equally, like a mass utility. Or every unit made will have a meter on it to determine use (which will quickly give way to a market of pirated gear).
OR, if we harness wind-solar-tidal-etc energy (or even using much of what we have now) and can produce nearly free energy, we could do this without looking to a huge profit margin.
For once, we could choose to offer something to society that does not rise and fall with the stock market, but rather with the flow of our communities.
Imagine a grid of clothes washers and dishwashers that start and stop like dominoes to best maximize energy use. Each one setting off the next in the middle of the night once a certain point in a cycle is reached.
None of this should discourage conservation and tech advances, but that too is one of our great modern challenges.
Thanks for the great articles Gizmag!