Development of Wireless Electric Transmission Infrastructure Makes Progress
By now all of us are highly accustomed to wireless technology as it relates to small devices like laptops and smart phones, but new developments are bringing the technology to larger scale applications like wireless electric transmission. Eventually the day will come when it’s possible to transmit many kilowatts of electricity over miles of distance, and that day is closer than you might think!
Primer on Wireless Electric Transmission Infrastructure
A company called PowerLight Technologies is one of the players in this space. The company’s CTO recently said that its technology should be ready for real world customer testing in about 2 years.
The company’s technology converts electricity into rays of near-infrared light that can be harnessed, shaped, and beamed to special receivers that convert it back to electricity for the point of use. It’s this beaming technology that provides the capability to wirelessly transmit power over long distances, high altitudes and in the deep sea. As an added bonus, the beaming action acts as a barrier to minimize energy loss during the transmission process while maximizing the energy at the end of the process.
The company equates its technology to a “wireless extension cord” because it can access electricity from, say, an electrical outlet or generator, and then send it through the air far distances, including to remote locations that are difficult to access.
Although PowerLight’s solution caters to the construction and telecom industries, the company is honing the foundational technology that will someday enable wireless electric transmission at the utility scale. And when that happens, it could represent a paradigm shift in the utility industry by reducing maintenance costs and, by virtue of fewer wires getting pulled down by trees, reducing the frequency of outages.
Of course, any industry shift will not happen for decades, but it’s exciting that the seeds of positive change are already being sowed.
