Wireless electricity products spark a new industry

The technique can power an entire room, assuming the room is filled with enabled devices. Though WiTricity uses two coils, just like the eCoupled system, it differs in that the coils don't have to be close to each other to transfer energy. Instead, they depend on so-called magnetic resonance. WiTricity doesn't depend on line-of-sight. A powered coil in your basement could power the rest of the house, wirelessly.

These wireless electricity products represent an entirely new product sector and although it’s very early days and the varied technologies have yet to find their most appropriate niche (here's hoping a long drawn out battle over mobile phone wireless charging standards is avoided) the industry certainly has enormous potential. For example, the Mitsubishi MiEV Sport shown at the 2007 Tokyo motor show presented the idea of wireless battery charging for Electric Vehicles via a microwave system where the receiving antenna was located on the rear bumper next to the license plate. Inductive coupling would also work well in this application so perhaps we might see a network of induction coils buried in roads and parking spaces (much like traffic lights have induction coils buried in the road surface as vehicle sensors) . As with some of the above systems that can communicate, much like a toll tag, this could facilitate intelligent opportunity recharging of EVs without any input required from the driver.

Paul Evans