The technology at the core of WiTricity’s approach is called magnetic coupled resonance, which can provoke an energetic response at a distance between two coils, one powered, the other not. If the two coils are correctly tuned to one another, energy flows from the connected one (installed, say, on the ceiling of a room) into the other (inside, say, your laptop). Giler presented a demo of it at TEDGlobal  2009.

Sony has developed a prototype power system that can send enough electricity to power a television set wirelessly over a short distance, it said Friday. In tests the company succeeded in sending a conventional 100 volt electricity supply over a distance of 50 centimeters to power a 22-inch LCD television.

Sony makes the point with data transfer rapidly becoming a wireless endeavour; demand for wireless power is also growing. Dell showed off its wireless charging dock last week, but the power has a very short distance to travel. What Sony is trying to do is another thing entirely.

There were no indications given about when this technology might make an appearance in the wild, but Sony attempted to whet appetites with this image of a claimed prototype. Sony hasn’t set a release date for gadgets containing the new technology, but it it expected to be released to the market in the next 6 months.

The system achieves this feat through magnetic resonance. A power supply feeds electricity into a square coil of wires 40 cm across, called the primary coil, to produce a magnetic field. When a secondary coil is brought within the magnetic field this causes a current to be induced and so the electricity transfer is completed