I see what you mean. I was unaware of their focused beam method. OTOH, Tesla did invent radio as we know it , but no one seems to know that.. I'm not a slavish Tesla fan, but the history is reasonably clear.
This system wouldn't solve the power distribution problem either, since the lack of enough copper happens at the lower voltage distribution level. Similar methods have been proposed to send power to earth from orbiting solar cell arrays, and probably just as impractical. Visions of birds and small aircraft being vaporized if they accidentally cross the beam come to mind. On Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 07:42:44 PM UTC, Robin <mixent...@aussiebroadband.com.au> wrote: In reply to Michael Foster's message of Wed, 5 Aug 2020 18:13:13 +0000 (UTC): Hi, [snip] >I read this article. Don't you find it more than a little annoying that Mr. >Tesla is nowhere mentioned? There's a good reason for that. The two technologies have nothing in common. Tesla used the Earth as a capacitor so that everyone was "in" the capacitor, and attached to one of the plates. This company is using conventional wireless, but in a tight beam. > >This is important. No doubt everyone other than auto mechanics and people who >like the hear the vroom-vroom would like to switch to electric cars. The >problem is there doesn't seem to be enough copper wire to carry all the >current required to charge all the batteries in all the electric cars. Last >time I did some rough figuring, it seemed as if the maximum number of electric >cars would be about 10% of all vehicles before the power grid was over taxed. >Look at what happens when there are brown-outs on hot days. Those air >conditioners don't draw anywhere near the current required to charge a 100% >electric car fleet. I doubt mobile applications of this technology would be possible, if there were that many targets that had to be followed with a tight beam. Besides, the beam is dangerous. Worse than sitting in a microwave oven. That's why they talk about remote areas, and a laser curtain to detect intrusion into the beam. It wouldn't be suitable for use within an urban environment. It could however be used to transport power from a remote power plant to the top of a tall construction on the outskirts of a city, although it would be difficult to keep light aircraft from crossing the beam I should imagine. [snip]
