Wireless Charging: A World without Wires

“What is this grandpa?” asks a young girl as she rummages through an old dusty shoebox while holding a small white plastic cube with a long trailing string. “Why that’s a charger for an old iPhone,” her grandfather responds wistfully, “we haven’t used it in years.”

It is no secret that we are headed for a wireless future. It’s been progressing that way for decades now.

The first cordless telephone was developed in 1964.

The first mobile phone: 1973.

Laptop: 1982.

Wireless music speakers: 1999.

And of course in 2016, the AirPods.

But it has to be plugged into the wall…? So let’s get this straight, we have replaced the wire with a hockey puck, which needs its own wire.

Hmm…

Apple, you got anything?

Apple Developing Wireless-Charged iPhone for as Soon as 2017_Apple Inc. is working with partners in the U.S. and Asia to develop new wireless charging technology that could be…_www.bloomberg.com

Well that sounds better! So now we wait and see. Apple has made it no secret they intend to integrate wireless charging into their devices, they just joined the Wireless Power Consortium this year to presumably work on standard technologies for the industry. The question then is just about timing and functionality. Will Apple give us more than Samsung’s plugged in hockey puck this year? We will have to wait and see. But the industry is trending in the right direction. In the future, we will be able to charge a phone just by walking into a room, because of ambient charging.

This is fine and all, but how does it even work? Science, I think.

At its most basic level, wireless charging requires only two things: a magnet and wire. When this wire is coiled around the magnet it creates a moving electric charge.

This phenomenon is called a magnetic field, and it is what allows phones to charge without a physical connection. Now the reason Samsung went with the hockey puck approach, is because the strength of the charge drops with the square of distance between the pad and the phone…I’ll let someone smarter explain it.

How Does Wireless Charging Work?_If you've ever untangled a Gordian knot of wires and cords, or seen your 2-year-old sucking on your laptop charger, you…_www.livescience.com

So the biggest obstacle to overcome is the cost associated with making an electromagnetic field strong enough to charge a device at a distance. But this basic idea has been around for over 100 years. Nikola Tesla created the first large scale attempt named Wardenclyffe Tower. However, it was abandoned due to, surprise, funding reasons. On a small scale though, these Tesla coils, as they are called, do work.

So we are left to wait for wireless charging technologies to become just good enough and at just low enough a price point in order to make ambient charging a reality. But we are headed for an incredible place. Imagine wireless charging becoming as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi is today. Remember, before Wi-Fi we had to use Ethernet cables (wires) to plug devices into the Internet. With ambient charging, anywhere you go around your home, your phone will be charging from your pocket. An Uber will pick you up and ambient charging will envelop you. And imagine that city block light posts are equipped with wireless charging, so as you walk by down the street, your phone charges.

The list could go on, but the end result is the same: we will never charge our phones ever again. And why stop at just phones? Think any household appliance, cars, buses, etc. Now if we can just figure out batteries…

Tesla Gigafactory | Tesla_The Tesla Gigafactory located near Sparks, NV will produce 35GWh of batteries annually by 2020._www.tesla.com

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