Wireless charging has become a common feature in high-end smartphones, but the technology is still in its infancy. Not only does it require the device to be within an inch or two of the emitter, the power output is not high enough to power anything indefinitely. So are your electronics doomed to always be tethered to the wall? Not if Chun Rim, professor of Nuclear & Quantum Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has anything to say about it. Rim and his team have developed an inductive wireless charging system than can beam power up to five meters away.

Like the inductive charging systems in Qi and PMA, the KAIST wireless power system relies on transmitter and receiver coils, but those standards have nowhere near the range or power demonstrate here. The team managed to get this astounding range out of its coils by developing a new mechanism called the Dipole Coil Resonant System (DCRS). This technology was designed specifically to solve the problems with MIT’s Coupled Magnetic Resonance System (CMRS) for wireless charging at a distance. CMRS was able to beam power up to 2.1 meters away when it was developed in 2007, but it was woefully complicated and inefficient.

The KAIST take on wireless power relies on a coil with two magnetic dipoles — a primary one to induce the magnetic field and a secondary one to receive the electric power. The design of these devices is considerably simpler than the older CMRS standard, consisting of compact ferrite core rods with conductive windings toward the center. We’re still talking about big prototype devices, though. The version being tested at KAIST is three meters long and 10 cm wide. It is definitely not going to be built into your phone any time soon.

The amount of power delivered (and how efficiently) depends on the distance between the primary and secondary coils. Peak performance is seen at three meters with 1403 watts and 36.9% efficiency. That would be enough juice to power several high-end desktop PC workstations or almost two-dozen new LCD TVs. The effectiveness of DCRS slips as the coils get farther apart until we hit five meters, where the maximum power is 209 watts at 9.2% efficiency.

To demonstrate that this system is still viable at five meters, Rim and his team set up a demo with the receiving coil powering a large LCD TV and three 40 watt oscillating fans. This really drives the point home that we’re not just talking about a more effective way to charge electronics, but a way to power everything in a room without running wires. For example, you could have a DCRS emitting coil someplace in your living room so the TV, lights, and any phones in the room could simply run off the power it shoots out.

The researchers envision the future of DCRS as WiFi for power. You might enter a Wi-Power zone and the phone in your pocket begins charging on its own. Devices that remain in the bubble of power generated by the emitter coils might never have to be plugged into a wall again. Of course, there is still work to be done in miniaturizing the technology and making it ready for consumer use.