2.3 billion people don’t have proper access to electrical power. Another 1.3 billion people don’t have electrical power at all. UAlberta’s Charles Van Neste, a Canada Excellence Research Chair research associate, has an idea to help alleviate this—to transfer electricity in a completely different way than is conventionally done today. He and his team have developed a quasi-wireless technique to transmit electric power over the surfaces of things. This system allows devices to be operated by placing the device on or near an energized surface—surfaces can be anything from a foil sheet or a metal desk to a human body or even the Earth. The technique has the potential to completely change the way we use electrical energy.

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