Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technology has been around for more than a century, but recently its popularity has surged with the introduction of wireless charging devices for consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, as well as for electric vehicles. According to technology consulting firm IHS inc. consumer awareness of wireless charging technology has doubled, reaching 76 percent of consumers in the United States, United Kingdom and China in the last 12 months. In 2014 only 36 percent of consumers said they had heard of wireless charging technology.
Due to this increase in its popularity, two consortia are developing industry specifications and standards for wireless power transfer systems. After the merger of the Alliance for Wireless Power and the Power Matters Alliance into the new AirFuel Alliance, the inductive wireless power product industry has been split into two competing technologies – Wireless Power Consortium, owner of the Qi wireless standard, controls the other one. These two technologies sometimes vary in their compliance requirements, as noted in this article from metlabs.
Meanwhile, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is independently developing international test standards in two separate WPT Technical Committees (TCs), because of the wide variation in the power demands of various devices and systems ranging from cars to smartphones:
IEC TC 100/Technical Area (TA) 15: Wireless power transfer of multimedia systems and equipment
IEC TC 69: Wireless charging of electric vehicles, including industrial trucks, buses, and scooters