Wireless power has the potential to be very useful, but range is a major hurdle. In a new proof-of-concept project, Ericsson and PowerLight Technologies have demonstrated a technique called optical beaming, using a laser to transmit power to a portable 5G base station.

Most people’s experience with wireless power is for charging devices like phones, watches or earbuds, but that still requires them to be placed on a pad, which limits how useful it can be. Lab setups are experimenting with larger systems that can charge devices anywhere within a room, but how about beaming electricity long distances outdoors?

PowerLight has been developing the technology to do so for years, and has now demonstrated it with a proof-of-concept in partnership with telecommunications company Ericsson. The system is made up of two main components, a transmitter and a receiver, which can potentially be hundreds or thousands of meters apart.

The system doesn’t send electricity directly like a Tesla coil – instead, the electricity at the transmitter end is used to produce a powerful beam of light and send it towards the receiver, which catches it using a specialized photovoltaic array. That in turn converts the incoming photons back into electricity, to power whatever device it’s connected to.