Tech & Biz

Wireless recharging your laptop at wifi points

by SOLARLIFE | August 23, 2008 at 03:34 pm

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Wifi Internet points may soon get added value feature, recharching wireless the battery of the laptop at the same time looking to your email. The technology was already demonstrated by Nikola Tesla with several light bulbs lighting by wireless Tesla coil transmission; This is the principle used by MIT for 60 Watt.

That's a luxury that could be provided by wireless power transmission, a concept that has been bandied about for decades but is creeping closer to becoming viable.

Building off work unveiled last year by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, Intel Corp. demonstrated Thursday how to make a 60-watt light bulb glow from an energy source 3 feet away.

The Intel team did it with relatively high efficiency, losing only a quarter of the energy the researchers started with.

"That, to me, is the most striking part about it: transmitting 60 watts at 75 percent efficiency over several feet," said Intel's chief technology officer, Justin Rattner.

"The power pack for your laptop isn't that efficient. ... It's one of those things that's almost too good to be true."

Wireless transmission of electricity makes use of some basic physics. Electric coils that resonate at the same frequency can transmit energy to each other at a distance.