The future of wireless power

Finding yourself with 5% power left on your phone and not a charging cord in sight is one of the everyday fears that plague the modern western world, but with the advent of new technology, having to worry about charging your phone, or ever having to even plug it in, could become a thing of the past.

Freevolt is a newly developed technology, based off a pre-existing idea, by former science minister and entrepreneur, Lord Drayson. The technology seems to draw free electricity from the very air, to power small devices.

The dream of Nikola Tesla free, wireless electricity for all, may come true, using the Freevolt technology. Showing it off at London’s Royal Institute, Drayson showed how the device harvests the radio waves in the air to make electricity.

Although we can’t see them, our atmosphere is packed with radio waves, transmitting data to and fro constantly; everything from radios to mobile phones, to televisions all use radio waves.
With all these waves flying through the air, a lot of energy is going to waste.

Freevolt taps into that energy, and converts it into electricity.

This is not a new idea, but in the past, inefficient technology has rendered this kind of energy harvesting useless. However, with a demonstration in which he showed how much latent radio frequency energy was in the room and then used it to power a loudspeaker, Lord Drayson seems to have overcome this obstacle.

Currently, there are a number of devices developed with the Freevolt technology, in particular, some air pollution sensors, which Drayson had hoped would improve awareness of the pollution levels in the cities.

Eventually, he hopes that this technology will become key in powering the internet of things, which even now, we are seeing the beginnings of.

Although it is possible that the companies who broadcast the radio waves may have something to say about the technology, and even may want paying for the energy, Drayson insists that there is no legal standing for them to claim anything.

If the technology is found to be improvable and efficient enough, we could, one day, see our tech being powered by the air around us.