Wireless electricity now a reality in New Zealand
Sending electricity wirelessly through the air seems nonsense, but it is indeed feasible. Now in New Zealand, they are taking advantage of that.
The electricity we know from everyday life runs through a wire or other conductor. That’s why you shouldn’t shave in the bathtub or shower with your shaver plugged in, for example. Because water with soap also conducts and that naturally has nasty consequences. But a lightning bolt is also a form of electricity. An ion channel forms in the air. And of course you have the wireless chargers, which work by induction.
But there is another way to transmit electricity wirelessly, namely in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Like radio waves. With an accurate directional antenna, you can aim radio radiation precisely at the receiver, and thus transmit energy.
Wireless electricity through a radio laser
The startup Emrod Energy uses radio lasers. The very first lasers were radio lasers or masers. The technology is therefore not new, but the application is. The big advantage of a laser beam is that it always remains focused. This means that you can also send energy up to tens of kilometers away. This explains, for example, why ESA and NASA are seriously looking at radio lasers to beam wireless electricity generated in solar panels in space to Earth.
In a first test setup, which you can see above, Emrod Energy has succeeded in sending this energy wirelessly through the air over a distance of 40 meters. They now want to scale up the test setup, so that the energy can be sent up to kilometers away and with a higher power with less loss. At present, when energy is sent over longer distances through copper cables, around 7% of the energy is lost. There is no such problem with wireless electricity, but then you again have a loss due to the spread of the bundle.
Advantages for difficult terrain and disaster relief
The big advantage of wireless electricity is that you no longer have to lay cables in difficult terrain. You can also quickly install an emergency facility, for example if a disaster has occurred. In that respect, this invention unfortunately comes a little too late for Ukraine, where we are now having problems with the power outage.
And of course a wireless network can be quickly adapted by changing the transmission station or sending the energy via a different route. As a bonus, we then immediately have a good way to send solar energy from space to earth.
The disadvantage is of course that it is not really healthy to walk through this laser beam. That is why Emrod Energy uses lasers around the large beam, which detect if their trajectory is interrupted. Once that is the case, the radio laser is immediately stopped until the blockage is gone.
In short, this is a smart system that can solve an annoying problem. However, the necessary development is still needed to be able to apply wireless electricity on a large scale, but Emrod is doing well.
