Jill Harness
Charge Your Devices via WiFi?
by Jill Harness - February 17, 2010 - 4:24 AM

DSC_3385Thanks to WiFi signals, there is an amazing amount of electric energy just floating in the air at any given moment. RCA has found a way to harness that power and they are planning to release a charging device that works purely by snagging a WiFi signal. Supposedly, it is effective enough to charge a Blackberry from 30% powered to full in 90 minutes.

If you’re interested, you don’t have long to wait. The Airnergy will be available this summer for only $40. After that, the company will be releasing a battery that charges itself using WiFi signals. Just imagine being able to charge your devices all the time using nothing more than the power already saturating the air of urban areas.

[Update: This might be a case of really wishful thinking (or a hoax). Head over to this blog for more information. If you have another link with additional details, leave it in the comments.]

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Comments (13)

  1. Somewhere, Tesla is smiling…

    posted by arkansaswebb on 2-17-2010 at 8:58 am

  2. I’ve gone weak at the knees.

    posted by Tom on 2-17-2010 at 9:16 am

  3. Would stealing Wi-Fi mean stealing electricity?
    More importantly, can you run a blender off of your neighbor’s Wi-Fi?

    posted by Frank on 2-17-2010 at 9:27 am

  4. That’s amazing!

    posted by Chris on 2-17-2010 at 9:58 am

  5. @Frank, I wouldn’t think of it as stealing, more like recycling their waste. The energy is already lost to your neighbors since it is being broadcast outwards.

    However, I’ve seen several places discussing the dubious physics of this device. I’ll be curious to see how it is reviewed off the CES showfloor.

    posted by Jennings on 2-17-2010 at 10:19 am

  6. Yeah, I’m sort of dubious on how this thing would work. Otherwise we’d have been powering our houses off of the nearest radio antenna (One a few blocks away from me apparently puts out 900 watts, which is far in excess of my little wireless access point) for ages.

    posted by Karl Katzke on 2-17-2010 at 10:30 am

  7. It’s been largely discredited as a con, by people who actually knows something about physics and applies critical thinking to a subject and not just swallowing wholesale any commercial hyperbole.

    Read the comments.

    Start with the Cynake one.

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/goofy_gadget_falsified_by_scie.php

    posted by Bo Dixen on 2-17-2010 at 10:55 am

  8. Yeah, it doesn’t take an electrical engineer to figure out that this thing would never work. Still, those who know a thing or two about this field have calculated that it would take 35 years to charge your phone from the power emitted by WiFi routers. This device is clearly bogus.

    posted by J Reeve on 2-17-2010 at 11:02 am

  9. Oh and the comments on this site do a fairly good job of explaining it:

    http://www.ohgizmo.com/2010/01/09/ces2010-rca-airnergy-charger-harvests-electricity-from-wifi/

    posted by J Reeve on 2-17-2010 at 11:03 am

  10. No, Tesla is FROWNING at the gullibility of the poster. This is bunk science, pure and simple.

    My Blackberry Curve has a 1150 mAh 4.3Wh battery in it standard. 30% charge = ~3Wh needed. At 90 minutes, this would require 2W of continuous power (ignoring charging profiles). 802.11b is highest power Wifi spec, and most access points are limited to 100mW. So, even if this device absorbed 100% of radiated power, it’s still 20x too low to meet the claim.

    Plus since radiated power decreases at the square of distance, place this device even a foot away from the antenna and available power drops dramatically. We’re talking micro-Watts of available power.

    posted by Matt on 2-17-2010 at 11:09 am

  11. Yeah, my impression is that this is a hoax or at best an absurdly optimistic product pitch. Others have tried this before (Nokia, for example) and it just doesn’t work due to the very low power output of WiFi transmitters, the distance of any typical device from the transmitter(s), and, you know, the laws of physics.

    Wireless power harvesting of radio waves is possible (the Mythbusters did it), but you get so little energy that it’s not gonna help.

    For fun, check out this Mythbusters piece on “free energy”:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOMtLAqkLak

    posted by Chris Higgins on 2-17-2010 at 2:12 pm

  12. arkansaswebb-
    lol few people remember how important tesla was!

    posted by Cassy on 2-17-2010 at 11:13 pm

  13. See the rest of us need those of you who understand stuff like this around to explain them to us… thanks!

    Too bad I won’t be running my blender off of anyone’s wifi soon… ratsssssss
    giggle

    posted by ann on 2-18-2010 at 6:00 am

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