Splashpower
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Splashpower Ltd. is a United Kingdom-based company founded in June 2001. It has been attempting to develop technology for wireless charging of portable devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants, mp3 players and cameras. Their system works through electromagnetic induction, adding a free positioning induction loop (at the "SplashPad") to the conventional fix induction loop at the wallplug (used to shift between AC and DC currents). According to the company's claims, rechargeable devices equipped with a small SplashModule are placed upon a mousepad-sized SplashPad and have their batteries recharged at a normal rate.
The Splashpower system featured on Tomorrow's World (a popular science/IT programme from the BBC) some years ago, where it was given praise and demonstrated in (if memory serves correct) a London cafe setting where be-suited executive types were able to charge their phones and PDAs whilst having a power lunch.
As of October 2006 they have yet to make an announcement as to when products will be commercially available or at what price. They have been marketing a product that they can not produce for over five years. Due to limited resources and inexperienced staff, the company has been unable to produce a working product. Most of the companies claims have been nothing more than undelivered promises.
Some technical details of the Splashpower technology can be found in US patent 6,906,495 (available also from USPTO). As of October 2006 the company has not publicly disclosed key parameters of its technology, which makes it difficult to evaluate the product - for example, it is yet to be disclosed what the power transfer efficiency is (which determines the amount of heat generated), the practical limits on base size and power levels, and how tolerant the technology is to the presence of metallic objects in the magnetic field.
Observers speculate that the power transfer efficiency of the technology is somewhere between 25% and 75% but the actual efficiency is yet to be disclosed by the company.
In a BBC News interview on the 8th of June 2007, a spokesman from Splashpower stated that the technology would have a power transfer efficiency of around 96%.
This 96% efficiency figure is probably at the transformer, but signal conversion either side of the transformer is required to first generate the AC signal to present to the primary, and then rectify, regulate and safely charge the Li Ion cell in the mobile device at the secondary. Additionally, very close coupling between primary and secondary would be required to realise a 96% power transfer. This and the additional unspecified components in the system would significantly reduce the overall efficiency of the system.
Splashpower technology was predicted to become available during 2007, but the company was not able to bring the technology to market. As of April 2008, the company has declared bankruptcy.
