We keep hearing all the time about the dire state our infrastructure is in here in America. Frequently numbers in the trillions of dollars are tossed around as our needed investment. One of the noted infrastructure investments is the electrical power grid. Interestingly a big change here may be coming.

The story of this “new” technology starts in the late 1800s with a genius who we almost never hear about (save a statue dedicated in his honor by Niagra Falls). Nikola Tesla dreamed and created far in advance of his times. He was hired by Thomas Edison to improve upon Edison’s DC generators and made short work of it. After Edison didn’t pay him the amount promised for the task, Tesla left and started his own company, out of which he was quickly booted by investors. He then started another business which was successful. It is thanks to Tesla (and of course Westinghouse) that the U.S. uses alternating current (which has smaller electrical losses, so power plants can be further away from consumers) rather than direct current (which is what Edison had pushed for).

What Tesla managed to do was something quite incredible – pass electricity wirelessly in the 1890s! He demonstrated wireless transmission of electricity by lighting light bulbs from across the room.

Tesla didn’t stop there either; he decided to go big and try to create a power station that could transmit over long distances. He believed he could transmit electricity wirelessly over the entire Earth. Tesla tried to implement this, but was unsuccessful.

Yet he was able to do something that many of us currently can not. He was able to light a light bulb across a room without wires. If this happened over 100 years ago why aren’t we all doing it now?

Well, I don’t really have the answer to that, but the scientific community has begun to move on this. In fact, a television was turned on wirelessly in a recent TED talk presentation. It would be unfair to say that this technology has been completely stagnant for all this time however, as it really is the basis for other things such as wireless key cards, but we may be moving toward wireless electricity in our homes.

Even more fascinating, the last part of Tesla’s dream may be closer than you think. Transferring wireless electricity long distances is a challenge, but it can be done using microwaves. Several conversions of the energy have to be done in the process (solar to microwave, microwave to DC and finally DC to AC), but Japan is well on its way to making it work.

Japan plans to send up a receiving antenna to retrieve solar power from the sun, convert it to microwave radiation and send it to Earth to power people’s homes. They plan to make a Gigawatt power plant out of the effort.

What is great about this is it gets around a problem that haunts solar power. Solar power is unreliable on Earth because clouds and night get in the way of power collection. In space, this is not an issue, and microwaves can pass through clouds, so the energy could make it safely back to Earth, its intended place of use.

So perhaps when we finally do find the money for our infrastructure upgrade, it won’t be the same old electrical grid that we are all used to.