Japanese Scientists have created a prototype for transmitting power wirelessly.

From Geek:

Many smartphones can be charged without wires, but you have to place them directly on an inductive pad tethered to the wall. Ideally, power should be able to flow to your devices anywhere in a room without worrying about the location of an outlet. A multi-hop transmission system has a lot in common with some past attempts at transmitting wireless power, but instead of blasting energy out in all directions to be picked up be devices, it uses a series of resonators to move the power where it needs to go like a frog leaping across lily pads.

Power usage at the other end could happen in a number of ways, either from inductive surface charging (like we currently have) or another type of short-range wireless transmission. The advantage to multi-hop transmission is that the power can come from very far away without wasting as much power as you would beaming it wirelessly all the way to the destination.

Read more.