BERLIN—The trade group behind the standard that’s made wireless charging a common smartphone feature now aims to give people a reason to unplug smaller kitchen appliances. At the IFA tech trade show here, the Wireless Power Consortium introduced a new standard called Ki that supports cordless power for such countertop-sized devices as blenders and kettles. Ki, pronounced “key,” delivers up to 2.2 kilowatts of power via magnetic inductive charging, the same technology used in WPC’s Qi standard, with appliances and surfaces communicating via NFC wireless to arrange the correct level of power. A whitepaper (PDF) from that group touts Ki’s usefulness for “mixers, juicers, kettles, rice cookers, bread makers, coffee makers, wine bottle chillers, slow cookers (crock pots), griddles, toasters, deep fryers, and more.” It also lists a requirement that Ki appliances operate with more than 90% of the efficiency of corded equivalents.
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Blenders were the most frequently displayed items in Ki setups here, maybe because they’re noisy enough to draw attention in crowded exhibit spaces. The first charging surfaces will arrive in induction cooktops—an environment you probably wouldn’t want to drape a power cord across—with appliances capable of running when placed on them reaching the market in early 2025.WPC’s press release cites support from such manufacturers as Bosch, Midea, and Philips. The Washington-based organization expects to have a database of Ki-certified hardware “some time around the end of the year,” WPC marketing director Paul Golden wrote in an email. He estimated the cost to add a Ki receiver to an appliance at $8 to $10, depending on how much power it needs and the size of a coil capable of receiving it. “On the higher side for something like an air fryer, on the lower side for something like a juicer,” Golden said. Midea, for example, plans to add Ki to blenders, kettles, and air fryers. “It’s great for heating, it’s great for motors,” John Hooker, a senior engineer for Midea, said at a WPC booth here before showing examples of the transmitting and receiving coils.
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A second phase of the standard will allow the addition of charging surfaces via coils mounted below countertops, but that will require further work to ensure that a Ki charger can distinguish compatible appliances from any metal objects that might be left on a countertop, such as coins. Those countertops themselves can’t be metal.A later release of Ki will also allow for remote control of these appliances via smartphones. Golden did not offer an estimate of what it would cost to add a charging coil to a countertop beyond suggesting that the transmitter—a coil and an NFC antenna in a metal box—would cost more than the labor required to install it. That sounds like a questionable expense as an isolated upgrade to an existing countertop, but one that might easily vanish into the five-figure cost of a kitchen renovation.
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About Rob Pegoraro
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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