We had to stop and look at the calendar when we read an item this week that Intel is close to perfecting a way of re-charging battery power devices, or simply powering devices, through the air ‘ we had always thought that wireless power transmission was a myth and that perhaps April the 1st had been issued a second time this year and this was an April fool.
Intel showed a system at its seventh annual Research@Intel event in Mountain View, California, which it called a Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL).
No-one has quite been able to explain to us just how the technology works, but it seems that it’s like a form of resonant induction being effectively transmitted through magnetism, and only able to go small distances. The breakthrough is that Intel can send power over a distance of around two meters, and up to 20 watts of energy, without the distance rapidly decreasing the amount of power which gets through, using copper coils that could just as well be ’embedded in walls.’
Intel seemed to be looking at powering devices ‘ light bulbs, speakers and netbooks, which are directly in range of the power source. Safe exploitation appears to be mid-next decade says Intel, but there is a chance that in our working lives we will see ambient power sources, a bit like closer together wi-fi points, for power.
So far the only instance of this type of technology working is where electric toothbrushes are just a millimetre or so away from a power source, something that is today fairly widespread.