Relevance of the Proposed Innovation in Today’s Context

Relevance of the proposed innovation in today’s context

Innovation is as good as the adoption rate and complementing products that are generated around to form an ecosystem, wireless charging is another concept that has been tried for half a century now but with products of limited usability and distance limitations these never took off.  But as with any technology be it internet or portable computing, wireless charging also looks to come of age in the latter half of this decade. With the advent of Intel’s wireless chips, Toyota, tesla and other vehicles running electricity/hybrid engines there seems to be a variety of applications possible for a single hub based charging station that can supply power to an entire building/house and its support product i.e. paper printed coils that can convert any device into a wireless powerhouse.

Electricity was initially designed to run wirelessly through magnetic means but the cost and safety concerns were a major retractor to the medium of transmission and copper wires prevailed, now also in the focused group discussions participants had similar concerns about cost, usability and safety which led us to reflect, are the product demerits as great as to shelve this as another ‘the time is not right’ invention. So we look at the relevance of the proposed innovation in the context of the three highlighted concerns:

1. Utility: Surveys depict clearly that people would not pay a premium for a charger that works with only one device and needs to be discarded along with the same, also they are irritant of using multiple chargers for multiple devices and carrying them everywhere (a common laptop weight is 2 Kg’s and charger weight runs between 500g to 1 kg) so if offered a universal charging solution they would be more than happy to pay a premium as evident from the focused group discussion.
2. Cost: With a mobile charger costing somewhere between 200-1000 rupees and similarly 1500-3000 for a laptop charger, participants of the FGD felt that the impact of the chargers cost was not considerable enough for them as most chargers were supplied free of cost with the device itself and that additional charger purchase would only be considered if it offered feature sets like single point charging for all devices and that they shouldn’t have to worry about multiple chargers. A huge opportunity with this discussion comes from the fact that most major devices from 2017 would carry rezence based technology and would be compatible with our charger and provide a solution to manufacturers to not include a charger itself but make it optional for customers to opt in for a wired charger, thus limiting the environmental impact caused by wired charger wastes.
3. Safety: For wireless charging technology to go mainstream, safety concerns need to be addressed by a wide ranging concerns as most people have a simple logical thought(“if current passes through air, then it goes through my body and will harm me”). It has been proved beyond doubt that magnetic resonance can only be induced in similarly aligned coils and our bodies do not play host to even eddy currents and are safe, with more mainstream products from Samsung, Intel and Toyota due to arrive this concern may be put to rest with some aggressive marketing by the product companies.

Technology today exists to achieve 95% efficiency of wired transfer of electricity, which will enable wire-free homes of the future and providing electricity to a majority of the population living in inaccessible regions, the scope of this technology is immense (electric lamp posts that charge electric cars on road) and it is estimated that by 2037 90% of cars would be electric and 95% of portable devices wireless, so the applications are only limited by our imagination.