Magnet-wobble wireless charging system dishes out a respectable 10 kW

Re: Transfer Efficiency?

if you put them in the road at each bus stop, then as the bus stops to collect and/or discharge passengers some charging can be induced, thus maintaining an adequate power level to complete the route.

Re: Transfer Efficiency?

So you want to have a huge magnet inducing currents by moving another huge magnet through a coil.

And you want this to happen on a bus, where the payment system works by holding a card that has an induction coil which, when a huge magnet waves near it, induces current enough to power the circuit?

Magnetic induction is SILLY. It wastes most of its transferred energy (by inducing a field around the 359 degrees (L-R) and other 359 degrees (U-D) that aren't what you intended to induce a field in), it's completely non-discriminatory in what it induces a field in (i.e. anything metal) and if it's strong enough to move a magnet that's 30cm away enough to generate electricity from it doing that, enough to power a bus - god knows what it'll do to that guy that runs over it to get to the bus from the other side of the road while carrying gadgets, cards, metal belt buckle, metal in his shoes, etc.

It's silly. Give it up. It's neat for toys and toothbrushes, and then it's just silly.

If you're that keen, just make a bollard with a connector that the bus can "dock" into. As the bus approaches, the driver can request the bollard if needed, and when charged it will tuck away before he drives off. Simple tech that WE ALREADY HAVE and have no need of fancy junk to join two bits of metal together to transfer a current.

Re: "...a way to use this technology while the vehicle was moving,..."

Overhead wires & pantographs!

Re: "...a way to use this technology while the vehicle was moving,..."

MMmmmm... lots of metal embedded in miles of roads, just ripe for theft... Can't see a problem there!

Heavy plant?

"Magnets in the road, coil on the vehicle!"

Precision driver in the cab? [30cm] (or interesting but unmentioned alignment device somewhere; magnets tend to be good at alignment...).

Also: where did the "heavy plant" idea come from (other than the manufacturers)?

10kW, say the manufacturers. 10kW is maybe 15 horsepower (PS), being generous for round numbers.

For comparison, a modern small car engine is maybe 70PS, though it doesn't need all of it all the time. So if we had five of these 10kW things on one vehicle, we've got roughly as much input as a small car engine. But only when we're parked up at the charging station (which at that point needs 50kW wiring, piece of cake right?). So for now let's go back to one 10kW gadget per vehicle.

So you park up for five minutes, at 10kW transfer if you're lucky. Assuming you've got 100% storage efficiency round trip, you've got five minutes worth of 10kW output (or fifteen of 3kW, two minutes of 25kW, etc; all numbers approximate).

Heavy plant? Big diggers? I'm thinking maybe not.

On the other hand, in conjunction with something like the Parry People Mover there's perhaps some "synergy" (yuk) there, in the world of cost-effective zero-emission trams and light rail without needing a continuous energy input (eg without expensive overhead or 3rd-rail electrification).

You've never heard of Parry People Mover have you. Well that says something about the size of the addressable market for the Elix thing.

I wish them luck anyway. But careful with the hype.

http://www.parrypeoplemovers.com/

Re: "...a way to use this technology while the vehicle was moving,..."

IIRC there was s system of supplying electric power to buses through pads in the road. They only became live when a magnet in the bus pick-up lifted the contact. Think they had a reliability problem with them not reliably switching off after the bus moved off.

Ok the tech is old, but you get the idea why flywheels are not great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus

Already Here

The buses on the routes around here in Dundee are electric hybrids with flywheels to recover braking energy which with the hills here can be significant. We live at the top of a 60m hill and the double deckers sitting at the lights at the bottom of the hill can turn the corner onto the main road and get up the shallow incline to the bus stop entirely on the flywheel. You can hear it. The bus company, a division of First Bus, says they are performing very well and saving significantly on fuel costs. They are also much lower in emissions. There's a narrow winding canyon like road in the town a lot of buses use (right by the central bus station) that can have very high PM10 etc levels with idling bus diesels, especially in the winter. So these buses decrease that output significantly.

"University of British California"

Well I'm all for taking back the colonies, but it's actually the University of British Columbia.