Notes from Howard's Sabbatical from Working. The name comes from a 1998 lunch conversation. Someone asked if everything man knew was on the web. I answered "no" and off the top of my head said "Fidel Castro's favorite color". About every 6-12 months I've searched for this. It doesn't show up in the first 50 Google results (this blog is finally first for that search), AskJeeves says it's: red.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Powercast's Technology Cuts The Electric Cord
This is pretty cool. Business 2.0 reports on Powercast. "A Pennsylvania entrepreneur has developed technology that gives you all the battery juice you need directly from the air." Recharge your (small) electronic devices without wires.
All the news coverage on this seems narrow-minded in that it only mentions small devices as users for this technology...front end, yes. But the potential is mind boggling and disruptive (that word again). Imagine a large receiver mounted on your house or on a Quietrevolution wind turbine. With all the leaking electric current from all those overhead electrical wires made accessible, the obsolete and weather battered power lines could be disconnected. Or imagine a giant receiver mounted on a satellite! This technology has a huge potential!
The FCC (in the US) also limits the amount of power you can transmit.
Of course it raises the issue of capturing ambient transmissions (all those cellphones, tv braodcasts, wireless networks...) to power you devices rather than using a dedicated transmitter.
It reminds me of the story of the man who lived under high powerlines and put generators in his attic to leverage the field they left. As the story goes, he was sued by the power company for theft of the power and lost.
3 comments:
All the news coverage on this seems narrow-minded in that it only mentions small devices as users for this technology...front end, yes. But the potential is mind boggling and disruptive (that word again). Imagine a large receiver mounted on your house or on a Quietrevolution wind turbine. With all the leaking electric current from all those overhead electrical wires made accessible, the obsolete and weather battered power lines could be disconnected. Or imagine a giant receiver mounted on a satellite! This technology has a huge potential!
The reason that small devices are mentioned is that the technology can only transmit low power (wattage). This is one of the reasons it's safe.
The FCC (in the US) also limits the amount of power you can transmit.
Of course it raises the issue of capturing ambient transmissions (all those cellphones, tv braodcasts, wireless networks...) to power you devices rather than using a dedicated transmitter.
It reminds me of the story of the man who lived under high powerlines and put generators in his attic to leverage the field they left. As the story goes, he was sued by the power company for theft of the power and lost.
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