Posted on 11/18/2011 6:41:52 AM PST by Titus-Maximus
SALT LAKE CITY -- A radically new way of moving people around on the University of Utah campus is about to become a reality, thanks to 2.7 million dollars in start-up funds from the federal government.
A new transit route through the heart of the campus will feature a full-size city bus, operated with an electric motor. But it will never need to be plugged in. Instead, it will get its energy wirelessly thanks to a magnetic field emanating from the pavement.
If it works, it's a significant step toward the so-called "Highway of the Future," a concept in which electric vehicles could draw their energy from the pavement, without ever stopping to recharge. The electric bus approach is much more modest, relying on a single magnetic pad buried under asphalt. But it's already stirring national interest among transit experts.
The concept relies on breakthrough technology developed at Utah State University in Logan. The bus will be equipped with its electric charging system by WAVE, Inc. a Utah State University spin-off company.
"If it works well on the University of Utah campus," said WAVE CEO Wesley Smith, "our model will be to duplicate that to transit agencies around the country as well as campuses around the country." If the technology ever returns a profit, USU would share in the revenue.
What does it do to the operating costs per mile? Are there numbers?
Does it recharge the vehicle while in motion?
Can the power be easily stolen?
Nuclear power to the highways, maybe around the corner.
Who would have thought that bumper car technology would be the answer?
There are also wireless power companies for the home.
Does this magnetic field sterilize humans? Make you grow bald? Increase your eyesight?
I have a tooth brush that does that. I am not impressed. It’s just an inefficient transformer.
That sure is a lot of “If it works,”.
Didn’t they do that with solar panels and other green energies as well.
None of them worked.
Ping.
If using your cell phone might cause tumors imagine what this might do. Wouldn’t you need some sort of filtering or lead shield to be safe?
The concept of efficiency must not have factored into their decision much, I don’t believe it could come close to a direct cable doing the charging.
I’ve got enough steel pieces blasted in me to set off a good metal detector, I don’t think I can get near a MRI machine now. I wonder if I’d feel this while crossing the road.
$2.7 million for this?
I could have done it for $50K, including digging up and repaving the street
I have an electric toothbrush that charges wirelessly. I guess I have "breakthrough technology" already in my toothbrush. /s LOL.
Funny ...
The enviro lawyer’s were, just a few years ago, loudly suing the world (and its power companies!) to stop power lines from being built based on alleged electromagnetic frequencies and interferences with homes and cancers.
The enviro lawyers and their media cohorts were also just recently publicizing the dangers and brain cancers coming from the way cell phones use a magnetic field right next to a user’s ear ....
But, when Obama’s energy administration wants to “sell” green hazards to a university’s green market based on a university’s green policies for a university’s green research proposals and green-funded demonstration projects ....
(Regardless of whether those policies will ever be economically viable ....)
Seems like an expensive, inefficient way of power transfer to the bus. Gee, how about them electric buses and trains with the overhead power lines? Not the prettiest but they are all over the place and have a long history. Guess that’s just too old tech and wouldn’t attract wasteful spending of my taxes.
The complaints about electric power lines are so mind numbingly ignorant and contrafactual that it makes my teeth hurt. (Power lines store a lot of energy in magnetic fields, far less in electric fields, but radiate insignificant amounts of electromagnetic energy, for instance.) Cell phones use magnetic feilds because effective electric feild antennas would be about a foot long, wouldn’t work inside a car and would have to held upright to work well.
Probably not good for those wearing pacemakers.
And to think people worry about high voltage lines 50 feet over their heads. Now an EM field will be closer to you and your reproductive organs thanks to U of U and the federales.
This will require a federal grant to determine the cause which will subsequently be identified as a lack of physical activity and exercise.
This startling finding will be followed by another federal grant to build the multi-millon dollar “Michelle Obama Exercise and Nutrition Center”.
The answer would be yes. Can the power be easily stolen?
Again the answer would be yes.
What they are not saying is the amount of energy it would take to generate an Electro/magnetic field large enough to actually charge the bus. The theory is simple, send a A/C current down a wire, it generates a electro/magnetic wave, this wave will then generate a current in any wire that finds itself in the field. This is the priciple that makes radios and TV transmission and reception possible.
However, sending radio waves to a reciever takes very little power, in relation to the amount it would take to generate enough current to actually charge batteries large enough to power a bus. Plus Radio(and TV)waves don't actually run the set, they are merely the signal that carries the voice and picture, the power to run the radio/TV comes from the good old wall plug.
Anyone who thinks this will actually lower power usage is fooling themselves. We will have to build many new Nuke plants in order to keep up with vehicles of this sort.
The technology to do this has been around for many, many years. Ask yourself why no one has actually put it into use before now.
The modern pace maker is totally shielded from any Electo/Magnetic waves floating about in the air. There is more to worry about this system than some one’s pace maker(I have one BTW). The cost and the drain on our present system of power generation would be prohibitive to say the least.
A little more on the technology:
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18116082
More power to them but I’m skeptical since this type of power transfer has been known for centuries and I don’t know of anything radically new about doing it. I’d like to see the proposal that was prepared to reqeust the funding.
Also, seems like private industry would have produced similiar products if they saw a profit in them.
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