With the cost of Oil and Coal rising significantly, and concerns about the environment growing even faster the fact is – we are running out of power. There is one source that promises to not only provide a lot of power, but do it fairly cheaply and in a fairly environmentally friendly way that is directly out of Sci-Fi.

The tiny Island of Helen, which is part of Palau and is only famous because it was on TV has been chosen as the test bed for beamed power from satellite via microwaves to base stations on the ground by the US Department of Defense. Each satellite could have solar panels up to 3×6 miles in size with a similar sized base station. But that would provide about twice the power of Hoover Dam. Or in other words a good portion of the Western US.

What makes this interesting though is on the ground level several companies are doing the same thing. CES 2008 has two competing examples of wireless power at the cell phone/pda/laptop level, possibly making these units really wireless.

This technology is poised to change the world the same way the computer chip itself did. Other options could include powering pace makers which have long battery lives, but currently still require surgery to get it replaced.

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