Powercast - Wireless Power

A Pennsylvania start-up says it has the answer to one of the biggest problems in mobile phones: battery life.

After three years of keeping its technology under close guard, Powercast has come to CES 2007 to get consumer and manufacturer attention. Powercast is a radio frequency that is transmitted over a small area, and its energy is “harvested”–wirelessly–to give power to small devices like cell phones.

While it’s presented as wireless power, Powercast isn’t just a replacement for a universal charger. Instead, it’s meant to either continuously charge a battery or replace the need for them altogether.

It works like this: a transmitter can be placed anywhere–in a lamp, for example, that is plugged into the wall and sits on a table. The transmitter in the lamp sends out a continuous, low RF signal. Anything with either AA or AAA batteries set within its range–and equipped with a Powercast receiver, which is the size of your fingernail–will be continuously charged.

“Our solution is, if talk time (on a cell phone) is 5 1/2 hours, by trickle-charging (it) at work, now talk time is 10 hours because the battery never gets to dead,” John Shearer, CEO of Powercast, said in an interview.

There are many applications for Powercast, said Shearer, but the company is making the PC peripherals market a priority. Think a wireless keyboard or mouse with no battery, or a hermetically sealed battery that the customer never need access again.

Major CE and IT manufacturers will have to agree to build Powercast capability into their products, and thus far Powercast is revealing only Philips as a future partner. The first Powercast product will come to market by the end of 2007, the company says.

We know, energy without wires has always seemed like one of those novel concepts that sounds terrific in theory, but remains a tad difficult to imagine hitting the commercial scene for some time to come. Apparently, all that is about to become nonsense, as a Pennsylvania-based startup is set to capture the wireless-loving hearts of, um, everyone when it tackles contactless power products. Powercast has already “signed nondisclosure agreements to develop products with more than 100 companies (Philips, for instance), including major manufacturers of cellphones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors, hearing aids, and medical implants.” The firm’s radio-wave-receiving miracle device trumps existing attempts by “adjusting to variations in load and field strength while maintaining a constant DC voltage,” essentially ensuring that only low wattages (read: the stuff that garners FCC admiration) are flung around. The system basically consists of two parts — a wall-plug transmitter and a “dime-sized receiver” that handles the real magic — and energy is instantly transmitted whenever that disc comes within a yard or so of its tag-team partner. Incredibly, the receiver only costs “about $5″ to produce, yet the outfit has already secured upwards of $10 million in private funding, which translates into one less American that desperately needs to win the lottery. Get ready folks, if all goes well, Powercast will be shipping “many millions of units” by the end of 2008 — and maybe even sooner.

A Pennsylvania entrepreneur has developed technology that gives you all the battery juice you need directly from the air. Business 2.0 reports.

How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast’s platform uses nothing more complex than a radio–and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device’s battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

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Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it get? “The sky’s the limit,” says John Shearer, Powercast’s founder and CEO. He estimates shipping “many millions of units” by the end of 2008.

For years, electricity experts said this kind of thing couldn’t be done. “If you had asked me seven months ago if this was possible, I would have said, ‘Are you dreaming? Have you been smoking something?’” says Govi Rao, vice president and general manager of solid-state lighting at Philips (Charts). “But to see it work is just amazing. It could revolutionize what we know about power.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — Wireless battery technology unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show by Powercast LLC is destined for a consumer device being readied for release later this year by Philips Electronics N.V.Philips “will be one of our first customers to ship in volume later in 2007,” said Keith Kressin, vice president of Powercast (Ligonier, Pa.) . The company claims its Powercaster and Powerharvester modules can recharge batteries in consumer devices smaller than a cellphone using RF broadcasts from up to a meter away.

Using the 900-MHz band, Powercast transmists RF energy to a receiver module measuring about half the size of a AAA battery. In beta testing of a wireless sensor network at the Pittsburgh zoo, the Powerharvester receiver module was retrofitted to the battery compartment of a wireless sensor made by Intellisensor (Pittsburgh), extending battery life from under 120 days to several years.

The modules “have been wirelessly keeping the batteries of the zoo’s temperature and humidity sensors charged at 100 percent despite occasional disruptions in the power beam which is located about 30 feet away from the wireless sensors,” Kressin said.

The undisclosed Philips consumer device that will use the modules includes an omnidirectional power beacon that will operate over a distance of about 1 meter to recharge devices within that range. During beta testing, a directional antenna was used so that the power beacon could be located 30 feet away.

Kressin said Powercast’s technology “is not dependent on any particular radio technologies; we can use almost any 900-MHz transmitter or receiver.”

RF power transmissions typically deliver milliwatts of power to devices using up to 4 volts, making it ideal for recharging small batteries in remote controls and flash-memory based devices like iPods. Powercast said medical implants will also begin using its wireless energy transfers this year. Cellphones are also a candidate, but current Powerharvester modules can only recharge about half the capacity of a typical cellphone battery.

Powercaster said it has received FCC approval for its technology, which includes a family of energy beacon transmitters and receivers. Development began in 2003.

Powercaster’s technology is unrelated to wireless power beacon developments by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which use a proprietary beacon and resonant antenna scheme.

Breakthrough Wireless RF Energy-harvesting Approach
Wins Powercast ‘Best Emerging Technology’ at 2007 CES
Pennsylvania-based Tech Firm Emerges as Leading Innovator
Among 20,000 New Products from Almost 3,000 Exhibitors
VEGAS, Jan. 11, 2007 — Powercast, LLC, was chosen “Best of Show for Emerging Technologies” yesterday at the 2007
international Computer Electronics Show (C.E.S.), from a field estimated at 20,000-plus new products from around the globe.
The Pennsylvania-based startup won the title after unveiling a breakthrough that could transform thousands of products
appearing at future C.E.S. events. The Powercast platform is the world’s first system that can wirelessly power multiple lowpower
devices ranging from phones, PDAs and game controllers to hearing aids and sensors.
More than three years of engineering development led to this week’s CES Powercast introduction, a company spokesman
said today. The system consists of two main components: A dime-sized PowercasterTM transmitter circuit, running
on conventional current, broadcasts an FCC-approved low-power radio signal at a predetermined frequency. An even
smaller PowerharvesterTM receiver circuit, embedded in almost any low-power device, harvests the energy to recharge
or even replace the device’s battery. The receiver chip can power any of thousands of different devices with innumerable
applications.
Powercast executives at C.E.S. pointed out that one transmitter can wirelessly charge any number of devices within its
effective range.
CNET, the official news organization of C.E.S. 2007, presented only 12 “Best of Show” awards. Honored with Powercast were
11 other industry leaders, including LG, Sony, Microsoft, Verizon and Philips. The event drew almost 3,000 exhibitors, and a
crowd estimated at 140,000 manufacturers, retailers and journalists from around the world.
A Powercast spokesman said he expects multiple manufacturers to be shipping a variety of consumer products using the
patented technology later this year.