Anicet Mbida 06:51, March 06, 2023

Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.

This Monday, he is interested in a system currently being tested in New Zealand and Germany, replacing all the large pylons of high-voltage lines with two small antennas which transmit the same amount of electricity, but using radio waves.

The innovation of the day is perhaps the end of the electricity pylons at the edge of the roads.

After burying the cables, we will now transmit electricity wirelessly.

This is a system that is currently being tested on a large scale in New Zealand and Germany.

The idea?

It is quite simply to replace all the large pylons of the high voltage lines by two small antennas: A transmitter, a receiver, separated by 5, 10, 20 km (or even more), which transmit the same quantity of electricity, but through radio waves.

There are a lot of advantages.

First, it's more environmentally friendly.

There will no longer be any need to crack the forests to repatriate the electricity from the power stations.

It also costs less, as soon as it is necessary to bring current to isolated places: in high mountains, in the open countryside or from wind turbines installed in the open sea, for example.

But how do you manage to transmit electricity wirelessly over tens of kilometres?

By relying on a highly concentrated beam of radio waves between the two antennas.

For this to work, they must therefore be right in the same line of sight.

It is a technique that has been mastered for a long time (among the military, in particular).

But until now, we had never managed to exploit it profitably.

This is apparently what EmRob, a New Zealand startup, has managed to do.

Today, they even work with the European Space Agency.

For what ?

Because by installing their technology on satellites, it would make it possible to build solar power plants in space.

So to have solar panels that give their full performance 24 hours a day.

And then to easily repatriate the energy to Earth.

But there are no risks?

What happens if a bird or someone crosses the beam of waves?

A priori, if we only stay a few seconds, nothing would happen.

It would still start to heat up after a few minutes, but only a degree or two.

So, in principle, it would be less dangerous than today's high-voltage lines.

To be verified, of course, with all the paranoia that surrounds the airwaves today.

But if it works, it's quite promising.