Wireless Power – Covid-19 silver lining.

The pandemic is a great use case for wireless power. 

• Until there is a vaccine, no one is going to want to touch anything they don’t own which paves the way for greater penetration of touchless technology for things like payments, doors, bathrooms and so on.
• Touchless technology almost always requires the device to have a power source which can be tiresome or expensive to provide as wires and transformers need to be installed or batteries constantly changed.
• The timing of wireless-power-at-distance technology is perfect as it demonstrated at CES 2020 that it is reaching a commercial level of quality and performance just in time to capitalise on this trend.
• This makes it much easier to install touchless sensors and devices and also enable them to do far more than they can today.
• This is because many devices that are installed with batteries have to make big compromises on their functionality in order that the device has a long enough battery life to prevent the owner from going crazy.
• If power can be delivered from a distance, this requirement disappears, and these devices will be able to do far more than currently.
• A good example is door locks where the functionality is pretty limited by the power constraint but could have much greater functionality such as cameras and intercoms with this restriction lifted.
• Wireless power at distance is a sub-sector of the technology sector I have kept an eye on for a while and I think that the combination of it just reaching commerciality and the virus-induced reticence to touch anything will create an upswing in demand.
• There are two ways to deliver power that I have seen that look viable each with its advantages and disadvantages.
  • First, Infra-red: which uses infra-red waves to carry power to a receptor on the device.
  • Infra-red has the advantage of being able to safely carry higher power over a longer distance, but the emitter must be aimed directly at the receiver.
  • This makes it ideal for devices that need more power but these need to be devices that are fixed and do not move.
  • The transmitter is also relatively simple and compact in size.
  • Things like security cameras, taps and lavatories would be good examples of where I think this technology excels.
  • Second, Radio waves: which uses ordinary radio waves in unoccupied parts of the spectrum to carry power.
  • This technology carries less power than infra-red and suffers from power drop off with distance from the transmitter but has a big advantage in that it can track moving devices very well and offer power over a much wider coverage area.
  • Hence, this technology is ideal for devices with lower power requirements and devices that move around.
  • This technology can also be used in devices with higher power requirements, but these may also require a battery to provide the extra power which is then trickle charged wirelessly when the device is not in use.
• Both technologies are able to switch off transmission when the receiver is obstructed thus ensuring that humans and animals are not blasted with (most likely harmless) electromagnetic waves carrying power.
• The two leaders in this field, in my opinion, are Ossia (Rf) and Wi-Charge (IR), followed by Powercast which has shown very good improvement over the last 12 months.
• Newcomer GuRu has some distance to go to be commercial while Energous continuous to struggle to do much more than Qi charging has already achieved.
• Neither Ossia nor Wi-Charge are publicly listed but I think that both warrant a look if they need to raise money to increase their scale as this trend takes hold in the market.
• However, in this environment, no one in their right mind will be raising money unless they absolutely have to given the pressure on start-up valuations.