Ericsson’s recent demonstration of electricity transmission to a 5G base station over laser has established the potential of optical power delivery for cellular deployment. This complements similar demonstrations of power delivery over microwave, with scope for exploiting the wireless infrastructure already established. While neither approach is likely to be widely adopted for general sites with ready access to power grids, both have potential for making valuable contributions around the edges, while microwave delivery is particularly promising in the IoT realm for electricity delivery to small devices. In such cases they avoid the need for batteries or local generation via small solar panels for example, reducing either capital or operating costs. Ericsson has teamed up with optical electricity transmission specialist PowerLight…