In a warehouse-like space in Auckland, New Zealand, a man is playing an extended lick on his cherry-colored electric guitar. His finger-work is deft, and the sound shimmers and soars, but that’s not what’s remarkable about the performance. The more astonishing thing is that the amp’s power has been beamed to it over the air from a source 36 meters away.
The man working the fretboard is Dr. Ray Simpkin, Chief Science Officer of EMROD, and he is demonstrating the company’s wireless power technology. Founded in 2019, EMROD is developing hardware capable of sending large amounts of airborne power over long distances. And it has a vision that stretches well beyond guitars.
The idea of beaming power wirelessly between two points goes all the way back to the 19th Century, with electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla’s experiments, although he never got close to making it reality. Since the 1960s, research interest has waxed and waned and the idea has slowly evolved, but recently a run of projects from private companies, universities, and governmental organizations have given the idea renewed momentum.
One major factor driving research into power beaming is the energy transition, which has created a clear use-case. As the world switches to renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, and hydropower, a logistical challenge arises: How to bring power from often remote locations to where it’s needed? In Europe, a number of major projects are currently planned to lay cables hundreds of kilometers long to do just that. Perhaps the grandest scheme of all, in which the UK government has expressed interest, is for a 3,800km cable bringing solar and wind power all the way from the coast of Morocco to the UK.
But what if there were an easier way to transmit that energy? This is the question behind much of the current interest in wireless power beaming. EMROD stands out for an especially ambitious take on that idea: It ultimately wants to build a “Worldwide Energy Matrix” that transmits energy around the globe via satellites in space.
“It’s pretty much the same concept as communications systems,” says Greg Kushnir, EMROD Founder and CEO. “You have a constellation of satellites that allow you to connect renewable energy generators with consumers all over the world using a power-beaming system.” Imagine there’s a solar farm in the desert, for example. An antenna would transmit its power to a satellite in orbit. This satellite then beams the energy down to a ground station elsewhere on Earth, or sends it to further relay satellites to move it a longer distance before sending it to the surface.
Power beaming in space is a major sub-section of the current work in this field. In the past two years, for example, a Chinese university has built a system for testing power transmission between Earth and space; while an American university has drawn widespread attention for its successful demonstration of the same concept.
For any power-beaming project, there are essentially two approaches to transmitting the power itself: Microwave or laser. With the former, electricity is converted into microwaves that are then focused into a beam and relayed towards a distant “rectenna” that converts the waves back into electricity. With the laser approach, electricity is converted into light and projected toward a receiver containing photovoltaic cells matching the laser’s wavelength. Generally speaking, microwaves are considered best suited for high-power, long-distance applications, while lasers, which degrade as they pass through the atmosphere, are more appropriate for smaller scale use cases or applications in space.
EMROD has chosen to go down the microwave route, and while its “Worldwide Energy Matrix” is a long way from realization, its shorter-term goals are based around transmitting power wirelessly on Earth via relay towers. In the Amazon rainforest, around a million-and-a-half people use electricity from diesel generators. As an alternative, the company is in talks to offer wireless transmission of energy via a series of towers (“giant lollipops”, as Kushnir calls them) spaced between five and 20 kilometers apart. EMROD also has plans to pilot a scheme next year bringing wireless power to a remote community in the Middle East, and Kushnir is in talks with the government of Singapore to wirelessly power a fleet of electrified tugboats. “The first stage would be building a tower to beam power to a charging platform offshore, but the ultimate plan is to power those tugboats on the go,” he says.
There are a number of technical obstacles to power beaming, from the way that signal strength can reduce over long distances to conversion losses as electricity is changed into light or microwaves and back again. EMROD says it solves the first problem by its use of relay towers twinned with proprietary technology that shapes the beam in a way that minimizes dispersion. Conversion is boosted by the use of engineered materials in the receiving antenna, which has allowed EMROD to demonstrate 95 percent efficiency.
There are a host of other potential use cases for power beaming technology. Electric vehicles and drones could be recharged wirelessly on the go. In space, power could be harvested by solar arrays in Earth orbit and beamed to the ground. Other space-based applications include remotely topping up the power of satellites or lunar rovers.
Another area that has particularly attracted attention is humanitarian relief. “More and more, people are being exposed to natural disasters, and to be able to very quickly bring energy to impacted locations would be a game changer,” says Dr. Chaouki Kasmi, Chief Researcher at the Directed Energy Research Center at the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi. Transmitters and receivers could be quickly deployed to beam power from safe locations to where it’s needed.
Kasmi is optimistic about power-beaming’s future. “The technology is there, it’s just a question of refining it and making it more efficient,” he says, but he’s also aware of the safety and regulation issues. High-powered lasers are dangerous to anyone in their path and, depending on power levels, a microwave beam could also be harmful. Kushnir maintains that you’d have to stand in the way of his microwaves for a several minutes before feeling any ill-effects, but nevertheless, EMROD surrounds its power beam with a protective shroud of light-based radar, which can shut off the beam in a split second if it detects a bird or any other object coming too close.
In Kasmi’s view, it’s likely to be at least ten years before we see any kind of full-scale, wireless energy infrastructure, but he believes that in the meantime we’ll see an increasing number of prototypes.
Kushnir senses that a tipping point has been reached. “When we started in 2019, we had to convince people that what we were doing wasn’t just sci-fi,” he says. “But now we’re having serious conversations with corporations and governments about long-range wireless power, and we’re starting to see small competitors popping up. When there is a strong need and you have the capability to answer that need, suddenly you see miracles happening, and the status quo is no longer relevant.”
Dr. Richard Hoad | Global Capability Area Leader—Novel Effects and Resilience at QinetiQ
Wireless power transmission (WPT) has lower transmission efficiency compared to copper cables, which have been engineered over many decades to have exceptionally low loss. It’s therefore not a given that WPT will come to outcompete copper. Still, in the defense world there are many instances where you can’t run a cable, such as for humanitarian missions in disaster zones or keeping Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) aloft. Extending the flight duration of UAVs is particularly appealing and important for defense applications where UAVs are used as “persistent” surveillance or support assets.
WPT’s coexistence with other technologies is another challenge that may be difficult to overcome in defense contexts. There are a whole host of critical systems and electronics that already use the spectrum in which WPT would ideally operate, and these systems may be functionally compromised if they are exposed to WPT. A regulator may therefore need to carve out an allocation of spectrum for wireless power, to avoid conflict with systems that might need to coexist with it. Electronic components—such as those used in aircraft that may incidentally be exposed to WPT—may also need to be engineered to survive that exposure.
Although WPT has potentially viable use-cases in defense, these issues will certainly need to be resolved before it can become commonplace.
- Mechanical human augmentation. Whether it’s additional limbs or smart exoskeletons, machinery is helping humans upgrade their natural capabilities.
- Biohybrid robots. Combining artificial and organic parts, biohybrid robots offer advantages such as self-repair and agility.
- Neuromorphic computing. Inspired by the brain, neuromorphic chips aim to equal the speed, efficiency, and intelligence of the human mind.
- Gene-editing and enhancement. Advances in biotech are spurring scientists to explore how genomes can be tweaked to make ecosystems more sustainable.
- Hyperspectral imaging. Hyperspectral cameras don’t merely record what something looks like, they can tell you what that thing is made from and help you see what the human eye cannot.
To find out more about QinetiQ, click here
To find out more about WIRED Consulting, click here
