Will electricity be generated out of thin air in the future?

The transfer of energy through empty space is not new. The sun has been practicing this procedure for more than 4.5 billion years. But the losses are gigantic; Most of the energy radiated by the sun is lost in space, and only a tiny fraction reaches the celestial bodies that orbit around it – and only a fraction of that can eventually be harnessed.

The same applies to earth when it comes to wireless energy transmission over distances of more than a few centimetres: Their efficiency (the ratio of usable energy to total energy expenditure) is well below 1 percent and drops rapidly with distance.

One solution is the bundling of electromagnetic energy. That is why Emrod, a cleantech company founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2019, relies on a beam-forming technique that converts electricity into a parallel-aligned electromagnetic beam sent directly from one antenna to another.

One year after its founding, Emrod presented proof-of-concept for wireless power transmission with a beamforming efficiency of more than 97 percent. Founder and CEO Greg Kushnir explains the key innovation: “We achieve the high efficiency with electromagnetic metamaterials.

With them, we can strongly bundle the electromagnetic energy in the transmitting antenna. We are convinced that through further improvements on the transmitting side, and especially on the receiving side (where the greater losses currently occur), we will be able to realize an efficiency of over 80 percent for the overall system.”