CAMDEN, Maine -- A kid whose father builds TV towers wonders why electrical power itself can't be wirelessly transmitted. Another muses over fireflies' ability to light up the night with such tiny lamps.
Architect and entrepreneur Sheila Kennedy, once a girl with a firefly fascination, introduced PopTech conference-goers today to The Portable Light Project, her effort to combine energy efficient LEDs, high-storage lithium ion batteries, and flexible solar arrays -- a project that has brought nighttime electrical lighting for the first time into villages in the Mexican Sierra Madre mountains.
The units also have smart sensors that allow them to be networked together, burning more lumens from batteries with more charge and, during the daytime, directing solar charge to the most depleted batteries in the herd.
John Shearer, founder and CEO of Ligonier, Penn.-based Powercast, demoed his wireless power transmitters. Admitting wireless power transmission is hardly a new idea, he added that the explosion of handheld devices in the past decade has led to absurd situations in many homes today, where rows upon rows of chargers plugged in to powerstrips must be kept in order to keep all one's gadgets juiced.
"All those communicating devices, that are wireless, still have to be plugged in somehow," Shearer said.
His company's first product, sold by luxury retailer Frontgate, is "a Christmas tree for the affluent geek," he said. "It's the first commercially-available, wirelessly powered product on the face of the planet."
While we don't doubt that the lights on his mini-tree were indeed powered wirelessly, a tip to Mr. Shearer (pictured) for future demos: Don't leave extra wires trailing up to your wireless product. Kind of spoils the effect.
