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Wireless Power: Has The Time Come?

Tesla: Reading in the Light of Wireless Power at Pike’s Peak, Colorado, 1899

We fill the fuel tanks of our cars, aircraft and ships with refined oil and then breathe the smoke from these transporters as they burn dirty hydro-carbons along with many toxic chemicals, including some known to cause cancer. Not only that, but when the “black gold” is extracted from deep underneath the sea, we can get the Gulf of Mexico toxic gusher which we can’t seem to stop.

Did Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) — the famous inventor of the alternating current power system deployed worldwide — have the answer?

With the discovery of electricity, everybody expected that all cars would be electric and run on rechargeable batteries. Tesla had gone one step further and actually produced a working automobile that ran on electricity taken from the surrounding air like an antenna picks up radio waves. This would revolutionize travel just like his AC induction motor had fundamentally altered the industrial world.

John Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford were not pleased with Tesla’s wireless power travel solutions. No gasoline engine meant no oil monopoly for the Rockefellers. Their Standard Oil Company was losing its key market of home lighting to Thomas Alva Edison’s electric light bulb.

The legendary investor and banker JP Morgan did not like the idea of wireless energy based travel — road, air or sea — because where would one put the meter to charge? He favored the joint solution of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Ford’s modern car based on the internal combustion engine for its clear income stream!Although there is some skepticism surrounding Tesla’s work in wireless power, there is no doubt that he was a towering figure responsible for many key advances that enable the modern electric world.

Shouldn’t we revisit applications of Tesla’s wireless power solutions? As we find ourselves surrounded by 21st century intractable challenges, there is a need to reconsider some of his seminal thinking in wireless power generation and transmission.

We need to incorporate those ideas, systems and solutions into the innovation which humanity collectively seeks for the age beyond oil. Unless we are able to increase energy efficiency during transmission and utilize the power already generated, it is difficult to envisage how we may slowly begin to wean ourselves away from massive oil dependency.

There can be no doubt that there are some vital answers lurking in the closet marked Tesla. This time around, with modern computing technology solutions at our disposal, wireless power might make even more commercial sense whilst reducing our dependence on oil at the same time.