Wireless Energy Tranmission

Intro: Wireless Energy Tranmission

This is a theoretical design with applications for a more efficient solar panel, efficient wireless energy transfer, and harnessing energy from everyday "noise". (Pat. Pending)

Inspiration:
The idea for this design was inspired from analysing how radios work, the interactions of piezocrystals and their physical and electromechanical properties.

Need:
Photovoltaic cells are well known to be largely inefficient and the most efficient solar panels have a very large energy loss from light directed to the cells and electricity generated.
With energy needs rising through the roof, a new method of generating and transmitting power is needed.

History:
The Solar panel is a practical application of the PhotoVoltaic Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_effect for more info.

Piezo-Crystals are used in everyday applications like in spark igniters in stoves to analog radio receivers.
The reason for this is that these piezocrystals are named such for the PiezoElectric Effect which they exhibit

In short, the PiezoElectric Effect is where a solid will produce an electric charge or current when physically deformed.

Application 1 - More Efficient Solar Panels:

The proposed method of application is based on the fact that all light is a wave and both a particle, as well as sound being a wave through a medium.
when an object is struck with a wave of the same frequency a its resonant frequency, it will vibrate (physically deform), utilising this fact, its possible to create arrays of piezocrystals much the same way as a solar panel that will resonate at the frequency of light (lets use 555nm light [green] since it is the most strongest emitted visible light from the sun, this can be changed for other frequencies).

The practical upshot of this is that shining a green light onto a piezocrystal array that each crystal has a resonant frequency of 555nm, will produce an electric current.

Application 2 - Sound "collectors":

It is also possible to change the frequency of these arrays to the same frequency of noises in cities; car horns, sirens, radio signals.
The application of this is to collect the ambient noise in populated areas and use those sounds to vibrate a piezocrystal array, which will produce an electric current.

Application 3 - Directed Energy with minimal loss:

Say I have an electric aircraft flying in the sky, it needs power but I don't want it to land.
The method for supplying power with conventional means is to use a solar panel and either direct energy (laser or a flashlight) to the craft or have it collect energy from the sun. Both of these methods have the inherent limitations of conventional solar panels.
Utilising a PiezoCrystal array that, for example would resonate at a frequency of 635 nm to 660 nm. We can point a Ruby Diode laser towards the piezocrystal arrays and the light waves will cause the array to resonate, and thus produce power, with this specific light source, it is possible to increase the supply voltage of the laser ergo increasing the power given to the aircraft.

This application could also extend to sending electricity through space, since space as a vacuum has practically zero matter to interfere with the laser signal and "dull" it's power.

Limitations:

Old radio receivers use piezocrystals to receive the FM or AM signal sent by a station, that power that is received is almost useless as a power source simply because it is so weak, but can still be sent through a relay and its message (audio in this case) can be heard through the speakers.

For Application 3, a limitation of the energy transferred would be any physical object or matter between the energy source and the receiving array, but this limit would not apply within space, where you could use a much more powerful radio wave as the energy medium, directed through parabolic dishes to the receiving space craft.

Reference Files
The attached image was made by me by modifying an example rectifier circuit in a program called circuit simulator.
It demonstrates how an antenna or piezocrystal array can produce an AC current and be rectified into DC with an LED showing the output current.

Comments

[HardToPort]

I'm glad to see that somebody is theorizing on a new way to generate electricity. I hope we do finally come up with a new, practical, efficient, and non-environment-threatening way to generate electricity in the next 2 decades. This is a good initial start, from my amateur standpoint, as well as a good idea for a new way to transport energy. Kudos to you, supah4xOr.

[Ammar AlamB]

an experiment of my interest. i luvvvvvvv... it.

[celuikisanfouD]

good

[Orngrimm]

"and the most efficient solar panels produced convert less than half the energy received from the light."

"Currently, the most efficient solar panels only convert up to about a quarter of the received light into electricity"

Make up your mind... ;)

The ideas are OK, but have you done the math? You say "crystal has a resonant frequency of 555nm". OK,. But since you want to use the frequency of the light to deform (With the particle-representation of light) a ohysical object, the object needs to react to frequencies of this wavelength. However, thats a whopping HALF PETAHERZ! 550 Teraherz! Good luck creating structures light enough to vibrate at this speed. Will never happen since by my rough calculations even a single 2-carbon-Molecule ( and the ceramics are MUCH more complex and heavy) are WAY too heavy to vibrate at this speed in resonance...
As an example: by a paper i checked, Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3–Pb(Yb1/2Nb1/2)O3–PbTiO3-crystals (Ferro-Piezo) have a resonance in the range of 160kHz to 220kHz. http://pubs.rsc.org/services/images/RSCpubs.ePlat...

A long way to >500 Teraherz...
Also other piezo-crystals are in this range of resonance.

What you may not have checked is HOW the piezo-Radios work. The crystals there arent used to "vibrate" directly to the AM or FM-Input. They are used as stable oscillator in a tuned RC-network. If you pound the antenna-output against it, you get a signal out of it which is demodulated in amplitude or in frequency (with a bit more analog-circuitry)...

Application 2 works. Linear technologies has energy harvester-Chips to harvest such sources. Be it Piezo from vibrations of machines of TEG-cells from waste-heat. a simple membrane with a magnet moving over a coil could generate a tiny current. However, not feasable as powergeneration if "classic" power is at hand: The power needed to manufacture magnet, copper, Chip membrane would need to apparatus to generate power for many decades before it would break even. Such applications are used in locations where you dont have access to power and need only tiny amounts of (Sensors as an example).

Application 3 has the same fundamental problems as application 1. Sorry.

[supah4x0r]

Thank you for the clarification on the applications and their practicality, however I did say that it is a theoretical design application and much more work is needed.

You mentioned about ferro-piezo crystals having a more realistic frequency resonance range, how about extending this application to space since eliminating the medium interference would help a lot with energy conservation.

[Orngrimm]

The problem still will be that it would need to be somewhere in the <500kHz-Range. Not much vibrates in our world at this frequency apart from stuff we do ourselfes like vibrations from machines...

Also piezo's arent very efficient in converting mechanical energy to electrical energy. In a project we tryed back in the days of my employment in a thinktank, we had an overall-eff just shy of 12%. Not quite good and way below what normal solar cells can do nowadays. Not to mention the high-temperature-sort of solar cells which acchieve >40% with concentrators: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5... No wonder we dropped the idea quickly... ;)

As this instructable is about energy harvesting and also wireless energy transmission, you also should take a look at matched coils and its application in resonant power transmission.
With those, you can transfer quite a good amount of power thru walls and stuff. Back in 2010 they powered bulbs with this: http://www.mediastreet.ie/blog/2012/10/30/happene...

The Qi-Charger is just one example of its application. Some 'ibles already on our site with off-the-shelf-modules https://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-hidden-Qi... or even with selfmade-boards https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Ipod-Char...
Also take a look at how a russian guy used this to power his spinning LED-globe: http://www.stephenhobley.com/blog/2010/10/06/now-t...

Another idea you could consider, is the directional emission of soundwaves as demonstrated in another project for another purpose: The Speechjammer (HArdware and original version): https://sites.google.com/site/qurihara/top-englis...
The Interesting part is the directed sending of accoustic pressure. Now think of this soundgun as energy-emiter and vibrating foil with coil-magnet or piezo attached as reciever in some distance. With such a setup, you can transmit power over larger distances and loose only power to the distance in a linear fassion instead to the 3rd power if you just make a (omnidirectional) speaker and reciever.

[supah4x0r]

Thank you for your advice, i already thought that using, say a parabolic dish to focus a radio wave to avoid losing much of the signal due to the inverse square law

[supah4x0r]

Also, I did mention in the limitations that using a radio wave could be more practical in terms of achieving a piezocrystal resonance

[Orngrimm]

But hey: keep thinking out of the box! Thats good! Innovations are made like this. But dont forget to check on reality with a short research and plausibility-check (Which would involve some math) ;)