Giga-What? Freedom from Energy Companies and Power Plugs

Tesla's Gigafactory and Apple's nearly $3bn investment in clean energy are more than just about batteries for electric cars and generating solar energy... they are steps toward giving us greater freedom to generate, store and use energy for our homes, offices, and devices. Together with the promise of inductive charging, they illustrate and enable a shift toward a world where renewable, wireless energy will be as ubiquitous as a wi-fi signal is today - available wherever and whenever we need it.

Energy storage: The paradigm-shift is underway

An electric utility company's generation capacity is today still based on a principle of maximum-load, one-way supply of energy - by powerlines into your home or office. Total capacity is geared toward the highest-level demand of the grid; at other times, the generation capacity is lost (or traded and transmitted as far as is sensible). In turn, any spike in energy usage beyond maximum capacity can lead to brownouts (for example, when heat waves lead to a massive use of air conditioners). As energy use increases, the conventional wisdom has been to build more capacity.

The ability to store energy in significant amounts (and thereby shift energy draw times and eliminate demand-peaks) changes the paradigm for energy companies and frees up significant existing energy generation capacity. Whether it be with (giga-) factory-fresh lithium-ion batteries, swaths of recycled nickel-cadmium batteries, hydrogen gas, electrolytes, or liquid metal batteries, communities, offices, and households will now be able to generate and utilise their own energy storage capacity and perhaps even reduce their dependence on energy companies. (The verdict is still out if utilities will be able to adapt their model quickly enough toward grid-level storage.)

Storage also makes renewable energy much more viable; wind and solar energy can be 100% reliable, even on a windstill night. And that is just the beginning, as many more interesting business models will develop: Home and office batteries will require software and control-equipment that levels the load over time, as well as between ‘in-house’ storage (or generation) and mass-generated energy. Home and construction site generators will be replaced by batteries. We’ll see more community energy-pooling models take off (and the movement to legalise taking communities 'off-grid' will regain traction).

Energy transfer: The power-plug will disappear

It's not just the generation and storage of energy which is changing; energy transfer to devices is evolving, thanks to wireless charging. It is already starting with the devices we use every day. Intel has committed to chips enabling completely wireless laptops, Samsung and Nokia are integrating wireless charging into mobile phones and Starbucks will let you wirelessly charge them (as will your Haier refrigerator and your next IKEA furniture). Market research firm IHS predicts that one hundred million devices supporting wireless charging could be on the market by the end of 2015. In a few more years, along with mobile phones and appliances, electric vehicles will charge wirelessly as a matter of course - either while parked, or even while moving (see also: Convenient Power, Plugless Power, WiTricity, Energous, Qualcomm and Power by Proxi).

The combination of energy storage, renewable energy generation, electric vehicles and wireless energy transfer is transformational; our vehicles could become mobile energy storage facilities. Inductive energy transfer will mean that our homes, appliances and cars will be able to share electricity between one another wirelessly and bidirectionally, communicating and feeding energy to the unit that requires it most. In the same way that USB ‘chargesticks’ (whether lithium-ion or fuel-cell) today give your smartphone an additional supply of energy when required, the electric car parked in your garage might just give your home an additional boost of energy. Today's car or light commercial vehicle can charge your smartphone, computer and power tools; it will someday also charge your blender, dishwasher and PlayStation.

Tesla and Apple may or may not yet replace your energy provider, but they are making inroads on large-scale renewable energy generation and storage. Their actions will begin to allow for broader scale load-levelling of current capacity, integration of new, renewable generation capacity, and disintegration of the traditional energy-provider model. They will also lead to more local and device-based storage and transfer of energy.

Images like this one will become a thing of the past.

Lukas Neckermann (@LNeckermann) is a strategy consultant, lecturer and entrepreneur. For more on wireless charging, see Wireless Power Consortium. Some parts of this article were adapted from The Mobility Revolution: Zero Emissions, Zero Accidents, Zero Ownership, available now via Troubador, Barnes&Noble, Amazon and many other reputable booksellers in eBook and in Paperback.