At my desk

You crawl under your desk searching for the tiny connector end of your power adapter. While down there, it stands out to you that all 14 outlets on your daisy chained surge protectors are full: Is it possible that cords can reproduce; after all, you only have 5 devices… You start to remember the last time you did this; the wire fell back behind the desk before you could plug in your phone: should you ask for help? Hmmm, you did that yesterday… Then, breakthrough! You fashion a brilliant mechanism that is comprised of just dust and other wires, and what does it do? Nothing less than stop the cord from sliding back behind the desk: MacGyver who? You plug in your phone and proceed to examine the colony of dust bunnies that has floated into your hair and latched onto your clothing: should you vacuum? Eh, next time, you just lost 10 minutes.

At night

It’s 3:00 AM and your phone has beeped every 5 minutes for the last hour, reminding you in painful fashion that the battery is almost out of juice: you get the message. But, wait a minute, maybe it’s your roommates: he left his unplugged last week. The nerve! He better have a good excuse. You turn on the lights; forgo the contacts and play a game of Marco-Polo with the phone. You find it! Drat, it’s yours! Now, where’s the charger? Maybe they should make the charger beep too; then you could find it. Genius! Wait, that’s a bad idea… Better turn off the phone and get back to sleep.

On the countertop

Sixteen gadgets and a tumbleweed of power adapters: this was not part of the kitchen re-model. You plug in your phone and begin to wonder how your small family ended up with so many gadgets. More importantly, you ask yourself why they are featured so prominently in the kitchen: nope, no good reason. You turn to the well-intentioned fruit basket that was supposed to hide the wires, but today, for some reason it looks more like an alien. Weird… You suppose that’s what happens when you mix fresh fruit with a dozen rubber coated tendrils, multi-colored charging indicators, and a dozen shiny gadgets. Time to unplug and push everything into the drawer… Too bad everyone; no aliens on this countertop, until tomorrow anyways…

This video was created a bit over a year ago, but I still believe that it provides a good introduction to wireless power technology. The first video is a visual demonstration to show that power is being transferred: there are no batteries in the demo units. Apparently, charging a battery is less visually interesting according to the producers that created this video.

So, we went ahead and made our own video to show that we can charge batteries.  If only we could get the video production quality on the same level…

And here is a classic by NASA, not by us, just for fun.  This is a good example of directed RF energy: where you use a dish antenna to focus the microwave beam. Professor Jenshan Lin spent considerable time investigating long range, satellite based wireless power systems. Imagine massive solar harvester satellites that could relay their power through a loss-less, space-based power grid. The relay satellites could then beam the power down to earth. Pretty cool, huh?

Sadly, to get a sufficiently focused beam, the dish size is huge. As you might imagine,  it is difficult/expensive to launch and then construct a massive dish antenna in space. You can save some size by using a phase-offset, antenna array, but ultimately that solution is also impractical. So, no loss-less power grid in space… Though given the excitement around (and money being thrown at) all things green energy, you could probably convince an investor to give you money to try it for yourself… You can start your search here:

There are a handful of companies and individuals researching and pursuing the commercialization of wireless power technology.  I’m sometimes surprised when I learn that people believe that the technology is nothing new:  after all, Tesla completed his work 100 years ago.  After stumbling upon a modern recreation of Tesla’s work, I thought I’d take a moment to point out a few simple differences between past and present technology.

Size and weight is the most recognizable difference.  The Nevada Lightning Laboratory recently recreated Tesla’s work in a modern lab environment in which they successfully transferred 800W of power.  To get an idea of the transmitter and receiver size, see below.  Obviously, this is not going to fit into a phone…not even close.

Another subtle, but important difference, has to do with managing the power that is both transmitted received.  Just because you can send 800W does not mean you want to send 800W at all times.  Most electronics have highly variable power requirements.  If you need a constant 800W, fine.  If you need 800W at full load and 1W during standby, you better be able to dissipate 799W of heat (that’s not easy).  As the researchers at the Nevada Lightning Lab discovered:

“While testing a high-frequency transformer at our engineering lab in San Francisco last June, another transformer located across the lab began to smoke profusely, melting a grounding lead placed across its primary winding.  Normally this might not be interesting, except that the transformer responsible for this misdeed was physically disconnected from any source of power.”

And, really, do you want this in your bedroom…?

Think about having this in your home...

Wireless power, by Tesla - Try to fit this inside of a cell phone

Corporations have shed workers, consumers have cut spending, and federal governments have the global economy on life support. In the United States, the specter of a deflationary spiral is looming and with key interest rates approaching unprecedented lows, economists rightly question whether our government has the tools and resources necessary to right the financial crisis. In the opinion of many economists, America is sliding into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In the parlance of every day Americans: The sky is falling.

What should we do: GO START A BUSINESS! That is the advice of some prominent academics and entrepreneurs. Are they crazy? Perhaps they were oblivious to the weeks of live television coverage that featured scores of befuddled traders and stock prices that oscillate wildly between “you’re broke” and “now you’re really broke.”

Those bullish on entrepreneurship during a time of depression point out that the market’s recovery will nicely coincide with a contemporary start-up’s readiness for an initial public offering. Little supports this argument beyond the characteristic optimism of the American Dream: not even a depression can dampen the allure of its promise.

Perhaps it is foolish to question the underlying logic of the bulls; America has shown her resilience in similar economic cycles, but, the pragmatist cannot ignore the drastic reduction in equity investment and lending. Venture capitalists, particularly of the early-stage genus, are conserving cash for existing portfolio companies while banks have tightened lending standards. Many angel investors have seen their net worth cut in half and are understandably less willing to add incremental portfolio risk. Corporations have slashed spending by trimming new product development and curtailing service agreements. What then, is a company to do?

Let me say: I believe in the American dream and am confident in the strength of American and Global industry. I believe we will be successful.

From 2004-2006, we conducted seminal research on wireless power systems for portable devices. We incorporated July 4th, 2006, a day picked in recognition of the unique advantages America had afforded our team. As of today we are in the process of expanding sales and distribution channels. I’ve had the privilege and displeasure of walking with this company during the boom-bust transition: Privilege for the academic value of the perspective, displeasure for the increasing percentage of unhealthy, but oh-so-economical Ramen noodles that comprise my diet.

The objective of this and future posts will be to analyze the complete start-up, and growth process of a company in the context of a once-in-a-generation deterioration of economic conditions. It will discuss the following five key areas:

• Team: Attracting and motivating talent
• Strategy: Defining goals, devising strategy and executing a strategy
• Sales/Marketing: Effectively promoting products and services; closing deals
• Technology: Balancing the level of technical/financial risk for each product
• Finance: Designing and executing financial strategy that supports the corporate strategy

I’ve seen dozens of solutions from Epson to eCoupled; but many of these solutions strike me as inadequate because they ignore the consumer. Namely, they require the precise positioning of a device (e.g. cell phone) atop a charger that only supports one device at a time. In short they are building: a cradle. Only as a bonus, it happens to be heavier, more expensive, more complex AND less useful… I don’t get it. Where is the value here? I’ll stick with my iPod and iPhone cradle.

As is the case with any technology sale, people involved on the purchasing side of Wireless Power Technology are either believers or skeptics.

The believers: With the rising importance of good industrial design, many OEMs have embraced the concept of wireless power. There is always a collection of people in each organization that understand the consumer need and campaign within their organization for the resources to complete product development. But, in many cases, they are unsuccessful because of their counterparts: the skeptics.

The skeptics: This group is difficult. As you may know, wireless power for consumer electronic applications has been hyped and aggressively researched for the last 8 years. During this 8 year quest, several venture backed companies went bankrupt and almost every internal R&D project at the big name OEMs ended in failure. This has led many to believe: wireless power does not, and will not work.

It is positive for the industry that OEMs have pursued this technology for eight years. With few exceptions, each  OEM has carefully considered the deployment of wireless power systems. They have detailed roadmaps and product plans… what they lack is underlying technology. So, if you can provide that technology, they require little education on when, where, and in what to use the technology.

On the downside, 8 years of failure breeds pessimism. You can’t show these guys a product or technology that almost works. They have to see it, feel, touch, and test it, RIGOROUSLY. They’ve jumped on technology before and today, they don’t want to bear the technical risk. They want a product.

Today, it is hard to get the the OEMs to take the first step. But, as they have, and continue to do move forward, it becomes smooth sailing.