Powercast … the future of wireless power
RF Wireless Power demonstrated over distance
Over the last year, Powercast (www.powercastco.com) has been busy working on over 20 commercial product implementations, and at the same time learning a lot about the advantages and limitation of our technologies. What we have discovered is several things. First, the strength of wireless power involves Powercast’s ability to power over distance. We have shown that we can transmit mWatts of power over 10’s of feet, and powered a wireless sensor-like circuit over 100 feet … which was even amazing to our own team. When looking at a variety of applications such as wireless sensors, security devices, power assisted RFID and so on … Powercast can strongly argue that these devices can be sufficiently powered over distance.
Secondly, Powercast provides an opportunity to power multiple devices. Piezo, kinetic, inductive and magnetic power technologies are largely centered on the powering of a single transmitter to a single receiver.
RF technology is a well understood, safe energy source. While Tesla discovered the opportunity to harvest RF energy over 100 years ago, Powercast is the technology company responsible for design of a commercial solution for harvesting RF energy, a company that built a commercial transmission system (transmitter and receiver) and a company that built a network of multi-point to multi-point powering solutions.
There are three types of wireless power. Near field powering that delivers Watts over centimeters. Far field powering that delivers mWatts over meters. And Ambient powering, which is essentially a form of energy harvesting. Powercast has built solutions for all three environments. We learned that far field powering is a more complex solution that promises 9 identified benefits.
- Any to any powering
- Power over distance
- Hermetically sealed and isolated powering
- Ability to power many and diverse devices from the same system
- Increased electronic reliability resulting from an untethered and distant power source
- Situational ecology, whereas multiple device powering exponentially increases impact on battery use
- Freedom in distance and alignment
- Elegant design variables including RF frequencies, form factor, RF energy levels, RF antenna design and so forth.
- RF wireless power can be configured as a power distribution system (transmit and receive), or as an energy harvesting solution (ambient energy)
These attributes of RF wireless power and our intellectual property really set Powercast apart. Powercast … the future of wireless power.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:06 pm
I saw you in CES. You have a platform for charging remote controls. Is it possible to make a bigger power board which can charge mobile and notebook. Or you design it and we manufacture in Taiwan. Can you give me direct phone line which i can contact with?
Your effort shall be appreciated.
Best Regards
Frank
Taipei,Taiwan
R.O.C.
886-925118425
886-952118425
January 26th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Frank:
Charging a mobile phone or notebook computer is something we have worked on with our near field solution, Powerspot. This solution delivers Watts over a very short distance. At the beginning of the year, we shifted our focus from these product architectures to far field powering. Far field powering is mWatts over Meters. We did this because we saw very low barriers to entry in the near field space, with many, many competitive solutions (eCoupled, Wildcharge, WiPower and so on). In the Far Field, we are pretty much the only guys in this space. That is the good news. The bad news is that less than 50 mWatts of power is the area we are now focused on. This area really is centered on low wattage devices such as sensors, micro-processors, micro-switches. And this focus leads us to wireless sensor networks, building automation, and industrial process. I hope this helps clarify the Powercast focus.
Also, as for making a larger power board, that would not be the issue with RF power. We essentially are not inductive coils, whereas more or larger coils result in more power. RF power can be generated with a relative indifference to size. It is just a matter of continual development of our technology, the heat sinc, and the RF antenna footprint.