Cordless Blender? The “Ki” Standard Aims to Unplug Small Kitchen Gadgets

BERLIN—The trade group behind the standard that made wireless charging a common smartphone feature now aims to give people a reason to unplug their smaller kitchen appliances.

At the IFA technology trade show, the Wireless Power Consortium unveiled a new standard called Ki that supports wireless powering of kitchen appliances such as blenders and kettles.

Ki, pronounced “key,” delivers up to 2.2 kilowatts of power using magnetic inductive charging, the same technology used in WPC’s Qi standard. Devices and surfaces communicate with each other using NFC wireless technology to ensure the right power levels.

The group’s white paper (PDF) touts Ki’s suitability for “blenders, juicers, kettles, rice cookers, bread machines, coffee makers, wine bottle coolers, slow cookers (cooking pots), frying pans, toasters, fryers, and more.” It also requires Ki devices to operate at an efficiency that is more than 90% of their corded counterparts.

Blenders were the most featured items in the Ki booths, perhaps because they are loud enough to attract attention in crowded exhibition spaces.

The first charging surfaces will appear on induction cooktops — rooms where you probably don’t want to drag a power cord — and devices that can charge while on them are expected to hit the market in early 2025.

The WPC press release cited endorsements from manufacturers including Bosch, Midea and Philips. The Washington-based organization expects to have a database of Ki-certified equipment “around the end of the year,” WPC marketing director Paul Golden wrote in an email.

He estimated that adding a Ki receiver to a device would cost between $8 and $10, depending on how much power it needs and the size of the coil that can accommodate it. “On the high end, like an air fryer, on the low end, like a juicer,” Golden said.

Midea, for example, plans to add Ki to blenders, kettles and air fryers. “It’s great for heating, great for motors,” John Hooker, a senior Midea engineer, said at the WPC booth before showing examples of the transmitter-receiver coils.

The second phase of the standard will allow for the addition of charging surfaces via coils mounted under countertops, but this will require further work to ensure that the Ki charger can distinguish compatible devices from any metal objects that might be left on the countertop, such as coins. The countertops themselves cannot be metal.

A later version of Ki will also allow these devices to be remotely controlled using smartphones.

Golden didn’t provide a cost estimate for adding a charging coil to a kitchen counter, other than to say that the transmitter — an NFC coil and antenna in a metal housing — would cost more than the labor required to install it.

This may seem like a questionable expense as an isolated upgrade to an existing countertop, but it can easily disappear into the five-figure costs of a kitchen renovation.