Channeling Tesla

Channeling Tesla, DARPA goes big time on developing wireless power transfer to military hardware. The question to ask here, why not for civilian use? Methinks it will happen if the military initiative proves to be successful. 

DARPA plans to create wireless energy transfer infrastructure to supply near-uninterruptable power to U.S. military bases worldwide. The plan, as reported by Popular Mechanics, is to use laser technology to beam electricity around the planet. Famously a dream of Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago, if successful, this technology, called fittingly enough POWER ("Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay"), would make the U.S. military less reliant on liquid fuel like diesel and vulnerable power lines, which can be intercepted or sabotaged by enemy forces.

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Nikola Tesla was one of the first minds to envision a wireless future. In the year 1900, he claimed that there would be precise wireless transmission of signals that would be received by devices no larger than a watch. He's of course describing what we now know as radiowaves, the foundation of how our modern connected electronics work.

Tesla, in fact, believed in this idea of wireless communication and energy transfer so much that he started constructing a transmitting station in New York to prove his point. Called Teslas' 'World System of Wireless', it was unfortunately never completed due to Tesla running out of money. 

Tesla's Wardenclyffe wireless station, located in Shoreham, New York, seen in 1904. The test facility was intended to be a transatlantic radiotelegraphy station and wireless power transmitter, 

but was never completed due to funding drying up. Source: Wikimedia

Tesla's concept ...

It was during the development of these transformers and alternators that he realized alternating current circuits can still function if they aren't fully 'complete'. Rather, that the current can still flow along just one wire from one grounded terminal to a second grounded terminal and the circuit would still work. Tesla discovered that when the source of the current was of high enough frequency, he could essentially use the ground as a part of the circuit.

If the grounded terminal had a high enough voltage grounded, and a wire was connected to the other terminal, the current could be drawn along the wire by the capacitance of a conducting body connected to the other end of it.

The capacitance of say, a light bulb, was enough to draw current from the circuit to light it up, which is similar to how radio transmitters work.

120 years later, by replacing radio waves with lasers/microwaves, Tesla's dream will become reality.