Every now and then you come across a company that gives you pause because at first, what they seem to be doing makes sense. But after some reflection, you realize the potential is far greater than originally thought. uBeam is one such company. After having raised $750,000 and currently in stealth, the company’s technology will allow devices within a small room charge themselves wirelessly. No cords. No connecting to anything physical. No need to even place the item on a mat and have the item outfitted with some sort of special equipment (that was one of my biggest issues with the technology, since it wasn’t truly as simple as walking into a room and getting power to your device).
“At that time, Arrington wrote that with her demo he’d witnessed ‘the closest thing to magic I’ve seen in a long time.’ uBeam almost certainly showed the same demo to its other big-name investors, and the big money was clearly soon to follow.” – TechCrunch.com
If they can pull this off, and make a device that will charge all electronic devices within a room, the implications could be enormous. Imagine a world where electrical power is as ubiquitous as wireless internet (I know wireless internet still has a while to go to get total coverage everywhere in the world, but for the most part, it’s everywhere). You will no longer have to worry about battery power or devices failing when you need them most (think hikers who need GPS to find their way). Or perhaps even have the GPS unit beam the electricity to the unit itself, creating an endless feedback loop.
“At energy hot spots in public spaces, ‘all you’ll have to do is lift your phone in the air and charge it.'” – Elle Magazine, Genius Awards 2012
On the flip side of that is the energy source and the energy provider. Utilities will have to quickly scale up their operations in order to meet the new burst in demand, supporting ever “connected” devices requiring power 24/7. It will be akin to the Internet exploding into the trillions upon trillions of web pages as we know it today, with an ever increasing number of “connected” nodes i.e. servers, equipment, people, mobile devices, etc. This then has implications on where we source our energy: perhaps alternative forms of energy such as remote wind farms or solar cells in space become viable since all energy sources will need to be harnessed to be able to provide ubiquitous amounts of energy all over the globe; oil, coal and natural gas may not be enough to satiate all of that demand, but I am sure in the short term they will be stressed much more than they are right now.
I hope Meredith Perry and her team are able to pull this off. Based on what I am reading, it seems like they already have, and will continue to iterate on their awesome product.