WiTricity

Wireless electricity supply for home, industry and transport. Throw away all those ugly cables! The principles of induction coils have been understood for more than a hundred years – and form the basis of all voltage transformers. The physicist and electronics genius, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), the man responsible for some of the key inventions behind alternating current electrical power supplies, also experimented with the concept of wireless supplies of electricity. Tesla only managed to make electro-magnetic induction work effectively over very short distances. His vision of great 'power-towers' supplying free energy were not shared by investors (including J. Pierpont-Morgan), who were horrified by the thought of giving anything away for free – whatever the benefits. Nearly a hundred years on, some of the problems of longer distance induction power transmission have been solved. The solution, apparently, is in 'highly coupled magnetic resonance'. Witricity is one of the companies working to build systems that will eventually mean no power cords on household and office electrical products and automatic wireless charging of devices. If you are in range of an induction power source – you won't need batteries. That alone would make a huge impact on battery disposal problems and save some of the huge amounts of money and precious resources go into throw away and rechargeable batteries. Witricity is also working on wireless power solutions for industry and transportation. Very interesting and a technology that seems a very solid bet for future uptake. So, can you throw away all those ugly cable and rip out your unsightly power sockets? Well, not yet, but soon, quite soon… http://witricity.com Good Economist article / AV link on Witricity: Http :// www.economist. Com/audiovideo? Fr_story=061f098a65c9f1854a11d3568753eb7becbfb43f&rf=bm%3ffsrc=nlw|pub|10-12-11|publishers_newsletter