The bit about “All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once” doesn’t really make sense except as an analogy, or as the reporter not understanding what’s really going on. They’re making the transmitter, and there’s no need to transmit at multiple frequencies, so they’d only need to receive at one frequency.
I suspect it’s an analogy for this part, which does make sense:
Except for the use of the non-word “hyperefficient,” which has no meaning as a technical term and is nothing more than marketing doublespeak.
I’m trying to understand. Is this energy coming from all the various radio waves in the atmosphere, and then a device combines them to make a useful source of electricity? And the question was about electric vehicles. That’s a lot of electricity, and it seems to me that would require a lot of contributing sources.
Or is this like the electricity you get from the utility company, which they somehow make available only to you? They ask you, “Would you like your power to be wired or wireless?” Cecil mentioned that it might cause physiological harm to people; perhaps, but I think surely the wattage would start screwing up a lot of electrical devices in the common home. Think about a 220 watt washing machine.
Tesla’s idea was, as far as I can see, twofold:[ol]
[li]By somehow “priming the pump”, he could grab free electricity out of the air. This part was simply nonsense.[/li][li]He could use this to completely replace what we today call the power grid. No more high-tension lines, substations, or drops. This could be done in theory, but[list=a][/li][li]the losses would be enormous, and[/li][li]if it didn’t fry the entire biosphere right away, it would at least give every living thing fatal tumors within a year.[/li][/ol]
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user_hostile, you are the pwner, and I am the nail unto which your hammer doth fall…THANK YOU! that’s the bulk of an answer I was looking for…light in the forest analogy not necessary. The math of the other answers was not necessary either, I got the point…and calling me stupid only made it fun. Powercast is peddling junk. Neat junk, maybe it’ll go somewhere…but they don’t do their credibility any justice by hyping this thing so much.
“imagine having your cell phone start charging in your pocket the minute you walk into your home” is a horrible horrible HORRIBLE exaggeration. The writer of that article should be smacked. More like “Imagine having your cell phone start charging the minute you walk into your home and go lie in the corner with your belt an inch away from the wall socket and stay there for two days.”
As this thing is, they might as well have a plugged-in amp arcing a constant spark to the nearest bare copper wire in one of their devices…or something. I’m surprised nobody mentioned a vandergraaf generator (sp?) the basics of which I do understand, having help build a couple home-styles that were pretty successful…but that would have confused things. I get that it collects projected static…from within itself, blabla…but projected and collected power nonetheless.
sorry for arguing more than necessary…I really don’t think I’m smarter than y’all…I KNOW IT!!! it’s just the internet…jeeeeeeeeeeeez…
thanks for the info!
They had a Tesla coil at the L.A. Observatory. It looked cool. But what did it demonstrate other than static electricity?
A way to eliminate this’?
user_hostile, that’s a great response.
How well do walls and objects reflect radio waves (of whatever unlicensed frequency PowerStream uses)? Can specially-constructed rooms or hand-picked frequencies signficantly affect efficiency?
C’mon, how smart can user_hostile be when he thinks that One Hit Wonder is abbreviated OWH? 
I took it as a compliment…One Wonderful Hit…
honestly, prior answers were just as informative…I was mostly looking for devices of the same nature that this powercast thing would eventually be thrown in a box with…figuring SOMETHING had to use these principles (principals?) before…I knew about the vandergraph, didn’t think illuminating a fluorescent was the same thing…Uncle Cheech didn’t mention any! just about every response here is better than his. PWNED by his own nephews as well.
what’s the world’s smallest tesla coil?
Welcome, OWH 
, now that you have achieved a form more palatable here. Your original avatar was (how can I say this politely?) a bit jerkish and we frown on that. Not the gleefully enthusiastic hostility as much as the seemingly blatant refusal to listen to reason. Me, I don’t mind hostility expressed with a certain amount of enthusiastic glee, but I’ll admit to reacting badly to a refusal to accept what I say as the Wise and Compleat Truth it ALWAYS is.
Anyone remember the Heinlein story Waldo? In it, he posits that free energy could have a deleterious effect on humans. I know it’s a little OT, but how believable is that? John W. Kennedy mentioned “fatal tumors within a year,” but is that necessarily correct?