Essay talk:Nikola Tesla's Wireless Power Transmission

Please leave your thoughts. Do you think Wireless Power Transmission is feasible? Is there anything that I didn't cover in this essay that you would like to read?

My $0.02

From the two links below, it seems like the idea of wireless power transmission (hereafter WPT) is possible, at least in the small scale. However, to really figure out if we could transmit electricity through the earth via WPT, I think we would need to build much, much larger coils. I really don't have much to add, though, because I have absolutely no expertise in this area; all I can offer is my own ad hoc opinions about what sounds intuitive and what doesn't. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 23:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy for anyone to contribute anything at all. Thank you for putting your two cents in!

Wireless power is not only possible, it is currently being used. It's mostly just for cell phones, laptops and ipods now, but MIT has been scaling it up significantly to the point where it can power lights in a lab setting. As far as replacing power lines, that's a long ways off, and even if the technology became better, the cost for such a thing would be immense. You will probably see wireless power find it's way into most of your home electronics eventually, but I'll still be working the lines to get it there.UncleHo (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but thats bullshit - there are no ipod versions with wireless power, and laptops and cell phones who do that certainly didn't escape any lab yet.

They haven't escaped the lab yet, true, but they're working on it.Stilldeciding (talk) 01:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

What are you talking about? My Samsung Galaxy S9+ has perfectly working wireless charing. In fact I only use that nowadays...186.18.32.89 (talk) 22:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually, you can use wireless power to charge your Ipod, cellphone and other devices. See: powermatUncleHo (talk) 04:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Related article

This article's mostly about harvesting energy from ambient radio and TV transmissions, but it also names some companies doing work on direct wireless transmission of power -- might lead to more useful info. --MarkGall (talk) 13:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for bringing that to my attention. Hmm, the "ambient power cell phone" thing they mention reminds me of crystal radios. They're interesting little devices, powered only by the broadcast power.Stilldeciding (talk) 02:43, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but unless you use a really long antenna wire, you also need a coil, and even without one you still need a ground and a high-impedance earphone. (Or a battery-powered amp circuit, like the Pixie ham radio transceiver.) In terms of power transmission discussions, you're still talking about a miniscule amount of power being captured; in order for a Wardenclyffe-type system to work, the amount of power put into the transmitter would have to be much greater even then the magnetron that zapped Percy Spencer's chocolate bar. Assuming that a transmitter system would be microwave-based, microwaves cook things. At best, it may be possible to transmit power using high-energy masers to specific, stationary or slow-moving targets, but even that would have to be very reliable to avoid setting fire to nearby plant life or birds passing through. I think I've mentioned before -- it's extremely dangerous to work around radio and TV antennas while they're live, and people who do that sort of thing for a living take some major precautions while they're up on those towers to avoid getting cooked. A viable power transmitter, assuming it wasn't unidirectional, would have to put out a signal at least an order of magnitude stronger than a TV signal (many of which transmit upwards of half a megawatt because of the wide bandwidth of a TV station).

Although I'm not an active ham operator, I got my amateur license about seven years ago and know a fair amount about radio transmission; this was essentially what Tesla was trying to do, albeit without modulating the signal. The principle in and of itself is fairly sound, but the risks are rather too high for it to be a reasonable proposal for anything except certain dedicated applications. EVDebs (talk) 05:01, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

First: Yes, unfortunately, the crystal radio can only serve as weak proof-of-concept. Second: agreed, we would need a huge amount of power to do it (but I've never heard this thing about Percy Spencer's chocolate bar; I'll look that up later). Third: As far as I know, the Wardenclyffe system would not be microwave-based (unless you were talking about powering cell phones when you mentioned microwaves) since the Earth resonates at a much, much lower frequency. I realize that microwaves cook things, but do lower frequency waves act in the same way? I mean, like I said, unlike you I have no formal training; I wouldn't know. Thanks!Stilldeciding (talk) 02:42, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

They can, though maybe not quite as effectively as microwaves; you'd probably have to pump out a lot more power. (I do know that there's a reason it's illegal to use a walkie-talkie with a damaged antenna -- on UHF and VHF radios you can burn yourself on the exposed metal.) Also, bizarre things happen with improperly calibrated lower-frequency antennas -- years ago WBZ in Boston had a problem with their transmitting tower where neighbors could hear their signal on random household objects, and there's video of some redneck pumping 70Kw through a CB radio and causing the camcorder to crash. (I shudder to think what might have happened had one of his buddies been standing barefoot on a manhole cover.)

Also, the ambient signal collector was done on Mythbusters; it actually did work, but the amount of current generated was miniscule. EVDebs (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2010 (UTC)