Sony prototype to send electricity wirelessly

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 05 October 2009, 14:45 IST   |    9 Comments
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Sony prototype to send electricity wirelessly
Bangalore: Sony has developed a prototype power system that can send enough electricity to power a television set wirelessly over a short distance. The company was successful to send a conventional 100 volt electricity supply over a distance of 50 centimeters, powering a 22 inch LCD television during tests. The system achieves this state through a magnetic resonance. The power supply feeds electricity into a square coil of wires 40 cm (about 15 inches) across, called the primary coil, to produce a magnetic field. A secondary coil which is brought within the magnetic field causes current to be induced, and then the electricity transfer is completed, reports the Computerworld. These two devices have to be tuned to the same resonant frequency for making the power transfer successful, but alignment of the two coils is not necessary, said the company. This also means that metallic devices placed inside the magnetic field would not cause the coils to heat up. There are drawbacks regarding the system's efficiency and the distance over which it works. The prototype setup was 80 percent efficient, which means that a fifth of the power fed into it is wasted. There were further losses occurred when the circuitry was connected to the secondary coil, as the original 80 watts of power was cut roughly by a quarter to 60 watts once it had made its way through the system. The company has develop passive relay units that can extend to a range of 80 centimeter when placed between the primary and secondary coils to extend the distance. There were no details provided on the commercialization of the product or the technology appearing in products.