Charge Your Car As You Drive Far
Imagine you are going on a long drive and all of a sudden, the battery of your car is exhausted. Stranded on a road, you need to look for a service station.
Car battery is not phone battery that can be charged by just plugging in a charger. It is a difficult task to charge it. Today, there are cars that run on electricity instead of fuel.
Just imagine if there was a way to charge it by driving it! Given the technological advancement of modern age, it is not impossible.
A newly invented wireless power system, as claimed by inventors has cord-less solution to charge a car.
What is this cord-less solution?
Some researchers at Stanford University have invented something that can be helpful to every person owning (or wishing to own) a car. Adapting a concept from quantum physics, researchers have produced a wireless charger. This charger automatically tunes the frequency of the radio wave (the medium transferring the power) to account for changes in the distance between the device and the charging pad.
Demonstrating the experiment, the team showed power transfer of 100 percent efficiency up to about 27 inches (70 centimeters) by the system.
Sid Assawaworrarit, a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford University said:
“The range is perfect for electric cars. The floor of a car is about 20 centimeters [8 inches] away from the road’s surface. You could embed the charging pad below the road surface.”
Assawaworrarit and his colleagues published a study online, reporting their research.
Wireless-charging devices, such as those for phones, have been in vogue for quite some time. However, the efficiency of any charging pad can drop dramatically if the device is too close or too far away from it. This means a phone must be placed on top of a charging pad to work best. Similarly, an electric car needs to be parked directly over a pad to recharge efficiently. Assawaworrarit said that for now, electronic devices were still tethered, albeit invisibly, to their power source.
How does this charger work?
The design of these wireless power systems comprises a source (charging pad) and a receiver, (phone or an electric car). In the source, radio waves are generated at a certain frequency. They excite electrons in the resonant inductor, which is coil wire. The receiver in the electric car or phone also has a resonant inductor made from a coil of wires. Once the two inductors are placed close to each other, the energy gets coupled from the source to the receiver. In the receiver, a component called a rectifier converts the energy arriving in the form of radio waves into usable electrical energy for the car or phone.
The optimal frequency for the radio waves can never be fixed permanently. It always depends on the sensitivity of the equipment, the distance between the source and receiver and lastly, their orientation to each other.
After finding the optimal frequency, deviations to the variables used to set it. It is advisable to not to change the distance between the source and receiver as it reduces the transfer efficiency.
As per the theory of Assawaworrarit, a tuning circuit can be built to adjust the frequency. However, the complicated design puts limitations on the movement of the device with regards to its relationship to the charging pad.
Assawaworrarit and his team created a wireless power system that does not use a source for radio waves. It does not require a tuning circuit either. It also works even if the distance between the resonant coils fluctuates.
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