Algorithms and Bicycles

This site is not about  politics or morality. I am not an environmental activist either. Yet, I am forced to write about a technological development that is disturbing me from exactly those perspectives. The object of my current dilemma is the recently reported wirelessly powered television.

It is a fascinating technology, although, as an electrical engineer, not surprising. James Maxwell and Michael Faraday would have just nodded at the development.

What bothers me is the power consumption. Commercially available 32″ LCD televisions consume anywhere from 90W to 140W according to a CNET comparison. Now, that is not an insignificant number, compared to that of smaller electronic devices like cell-phones.

According to one report, 25% of the energy is lost in transmission when one such wireless technology is used. And, according to Sony’s own press release, their transmission efficiency is only 60%. So, if we take the power consumption of a 32″ LCD television to be 100W, the actual power needed to operate it wirelessly is about 166W if we were to use Sony’s technology. The lost power is more than sufficient to light a small room in a house, let alone the number of smaller devices that can be charged with it.

The world is currently scrambling for energy. One of the root causes of the two wars this country is  currently fighting  can be traced to our need for cheap energy, in one form or another. There are millions of people around the world who do not have electricity  for their basic needs.

As someone who has spent much of his adult life studying electromagnetic theory,  I like the theoretical elegance  of wirelessly transmitted power.  However,  I am asking myself: would it be moral for me to use this technology in my home?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Computational Electromagnetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.