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Notes -
Wireless power transmission is very much already a thing, you do it with powerful microwaves.
The issue is any suitably powerful and efficient means of wirelessly transmitting energy is indistinguishable from a death ray should some unfortunate soul happen to stumble into the emission cone.
WOAH I had no idea! You just blew my mind.
Can we do it efficiently though? Is the only problem the danger?
Its nowhere near as efficient as just using a conductive cable certainly. IIRC its something like 50% efficient in a lab, so probably half that in real applications. You have to have a really, really good reason for not just running a power line for it to be worth it for high power applications.
The FCC actually approved charging via WiFi a few years ago, but its limited to maybe 1 W at most, not too many commercial applications at the moment to my knowledge.
But yeah, the lowered efficiency and substantial safety risks are the barriers at the moment. Maybe that will change in the future.
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