Wireless power is feasible - just read expensive with multiple zeroes following a single fixture.

The sun is wireless power and one can use it as an example. Solar power as it is tapped now by chemical conversion to electricity via arsenic lined cells is so unbelievably crude as to be laughable.

The wavelength of a solar wave if harmonically matched and resonated with - could tap almost all the enormous energy out of each ray of light.

Take a ray of light - it passes through space, through millions of miles and a complete vacuum only to arrive at our world and provide for life via heat and light. How does this ray carry all this energy and disperse it? Sunlight carries harmful radiations of tremendously high frequency, however, it is this frequency which can excite atoms and provide heat (just like a microwave does) to cook food or make a filament glow via its resistance to the energy traveling along to the bulb. A ray of sunlight is basically a waveform of many combined frequency waveforms harmonically carried on a primary wavelength. Man has imitated sunlight crudely with a laser, transmitting more power from one place to another without wires. A wave when disrupted disperses its payload on the interruption, channeling or dissipating its energy. Broadcast power via rays would be feasible but would be subject to much interference by weather, etc and they would be unbelievably deadly. So ray transmission is out of the question.

This leaves another, less dangerous option. Broadcasting power via means of sending a subharmonic wave of sufficient amplitude and electrical energy through two or more tuned circuits. But these circuits must be precisely tuned and that makes for an expensive production facility and power generator. The power generator would require the power be fed through an enormous circuit oscillating at a specific frequency. The wave conductor would be an enormous magnetic field - such as the earth's

Theoretically, each home and factory or facility could have a tuned receiver for power and the power companies could broadcast power on specific frequencies. Converting the piggy back energy wave into usable energy would be a bit more complicated than taking a TV signal and extracting sound and picture, but not by much and so it is very feasible.

The benefits would be no powerlines to fail or repair, no underground tunnels to dig, transmission immunity to snow or storms, etc. The downsides would be massive retrofitting of all power facilities, all homes and or regional distribution facilities. In practical reality the cost of each tuned receiver might be millions at first and only main power facilities and substations could use the wireless power. Eventually costs would go down and even cars could be run on broadcast power, eliminating all vehicle pollution - though likely offset in part by powerplants providing all this extra energy somewhere else.

Tuned circuit transfer of energy is a well known principle but only applied to the close-proximity circuits found in stepdown transformers and the like - which utilize the magnetic field of each coil to act as a conductor. For broadcast power to be conducted efficiently the earth's magnetic field or a similar field of great size would need to be generated and used as a conductor - that poses a technical challenge few have seriously embarked upon, even if they were aware of the principles.

Here's another 25th century example for you...

Lightning is another example of broadcast power. It takes the pent up energy in a storm system and discharges it to the earth as an electrical bolt of tremendous power. The earth is the receiver and the storm is the generator. The conductor is often the air with high moisture content. In theory, another method of broadcast power would be for all powerplants to discharge power into the high upper stratosphere and use argon or some other rare conductive and stratified gas as the conductor. The effect would be twofold - the earth would glow like a lightbulb even on the dark side and huge spires or towers could be erected that could attract what would appear to be multiple endless lightning strikes (discharges of energy) into them providing electrical power down below. What influence this would have on the weather is anyone's guess. Night would disappear and be replaced by an evening or muted dawn appearance - sort of the surreal and muted even dispersement of late afternoon sunlight through a raincloud.

The powerfield in the atmosphere would likely also create different atmospheric reactions down below, possibly causing storms or completely eliminating them. Such would require much experimentation, dedication and knowledge to make into a feasible wireless power supply and is my least favorite.

There are surely other conductors, such as the earth itself which could be used as a conductor, but these also provide impediments and difficulties. My favorite is the tuned circuit route using one of the specific frequencies present everywhere in the earth's magnetic field as a carrier wave.

Wireless power - that would be the next great technological revolution and eventually could be used to transmit power to satellites and spacecraft in earth's magnetic field as well.

SDAI-Tech1