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Comment by nxzero | Hacker News Reader

Work on wireless power transfer has been going on over 100-years, even Tesla worked on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transfer

Hard to imagine this being mainstream anytime soon. Is there any reason to believe this will become mainstream in the near future?

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As a physicist, I am similarly skeptical. It seems quite unlikely to me that wireless power will take off within our lifetimes. However, if it does happen, I suspect it will be because of one of the following hypotheses:

(1) Electronics continue to become more energy efficient, to the point that a tiny wireless power trickle is sufficient to run them

(2) Perhaps computers will be an enabling technology, both in design (with E&M modeling, algorithm-assisted antenna design) and in operations (computer controlled beam steering)

Anyone care to share any other "post-mortem" hypotheses?

On the assumption that it happens? Well, you covered the more likely ones. Let me add one more.

3) Advances in molecular manufacturing (Drexler-style!) allows us to construct atomically perfect transmitters and receivers. This, somehow, increases efficiency to north of 90%. And increases range, too.

I think that one of the NVRAM solutions in development like Intel and Micron's 3D xpoint might have lower power consumption per GB than DRAM given the non-volatility and thus the obviated need to continually refresh the value. So if we were to see DRAM replaced by NVRAM (or at least augmented, where all but the most critical data were shuffled from DRAM -> NVRAM each time the screen locked), that might be a pathway.

I tried to find some numbers on this, but this is outside of my area of expertise. Would love to hear somebody more knowledgable weigh in.

What about it makes you skeptical? Stop holding out on us ... :)

I wouldn't mind it. For a lot of my devices if you put on the wireless charger the wrong way you come up to a dead device. This would theoretically allow you to be fully charged if there were enough beacons in a building.

Most people would not mind wireless power that's not dangerous, but that is not a pragmatic reasoning behind why it will happen soon, but didn't happen in the past. Right?

It's almost like technology is constantly changing and advancing, weird. /s

Want to take it even further? "Wireless power transfer" has existed since the sun started shining. Sit outside on a sunny day, and you'll receive power through the transferred through the vacuum of space.

I know, I know, I kid. We're talking specifically energy transfer that is readily convertible to electrical current.

Like a solar powered watch or calculator?

Arguably, yes. Of course, the power requirement to recharge a battery for a calculator (in a decent amount of time) is a lot less than that for a modern cell phone. Same physics if your level of detail is Ohm's Law but very different in practice because we are talking about charging a phone batt in a comparable time to plugging it in.

Yeah, kinetic energy recharge of a phone is a pipe dream, last time I remember figuring out how much energy you can get from that, it amounted to walking across the USA from coast to coast.

Solar is equally crappy.

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