The days when piezoelectric energy harvesting was considered unreliable and had low power output are long gone. Hand in hand with the development of ultra low power electronics, energy harvesters have been drastically improving also.

Recently there has been consolidation in the RTLS and WSN market, with acquisitions of companies such as Aeroscout, MicroStrain and Dust Networks.

Working on developing prototypes and innovative products incorporating wireless sensor and energy harvesting technologies, presentations from electronics giant Intel and innovative start-up NovioTech will excite attendees with their proposed solutions to achieve optimized power consumption performance characteristics.

The Internet of Things was conceived in Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998.

A new IDTechEx report requested by several of the world's largest chemical companies looks at the families of element and compound that will be most widely used in the new electronics and electrics.

Although thermoelectric phenomena have been used for heating and cooling applications quite extensively, electricity generation has only seen very limited market in niche applications and it is only in recent years that interest has increased regarding new applications of energy generation through thermoelectric harvesting.

Energy harvesters and wireless sensors are not always deployed under "a walk in the park" operating environments. If anything, the most interesting applications for these technologies tend to be in sectors where conditions are harsh or devices are inaccessible once deployed.

On Tuesday the 15th of May in Berlin, Germany, IDTechEx recognised innovation once more with the Energy Harvesting & Storage and Wireless Sensor Networks & RTLS awards, in a ceremony that took place on the first day of the IDTechEx conference on the topic.

These naturally occurring, but mostly manufactured, piezoelectric materials are fast becoming a hot topic for exploration in energy harvesting, exhibiting 10 times as much voltage output compared with polycrystalline PZT(1) are utilized in applications where the emphasis is on high output and sensitivity.

Starting with more humble killer applications such as meter reading in buildings, WSN will grow rapidly from $0.58 billion in 2012 to $2.4 billion in 2022 according to IDTechEx research.

The gross sales of presenting companies at Printed Electronics Europe next week - including end users, integrators and providers, is more than €700 Billion annually. Attend the event in Berlin, on April 3-4 to learn how these organisations are progressing printed electronics.

The 4th IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage event will be taking place on the 15th and 16th of May in Berlin, Germany and will cover recent progress and developments in energy harvesting, wireless sensors and related technologies.

The toolkit of technologies that energy harvesting and wireless sensors are making available, are enabling system integrators to come up with solutions in a variety of vertical markets.

IDTechEx's Energy Harvesting & WSN conference in Berlin, on May 15 and 16 this year (www.IDTechEx.com/EH ) will focus both on wireless sensors as well as the photovoltaic and other harvesting technologies that are being integrated and are creating exciting new market segments for solar cells.

2011 turned out to be a very interesting year for energy harvesting, full of scientific advances, technology breakthroughs and new product developments. IDTechEx predicts that the trend is set to continue, with further developments expected in 2012, along with expansion of commercialization efforts which will push energy harvesting adoption forward.

Energy harvesting is the use of ambient energy to provide electricity for small and or mobile equipment, whether electrical or electronic. In 2011, $700 million is spent on the energy harvesting component itself, rising to just under $5 billion in 2021.

Those designing electric vehicles have much in common, whether they are hybrid or pure electric, on-road, off-road, on-water, underwater or in the sky.

Less than two weeks remain until the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting & Storage conference and exhibition and already exhibitors are prepared to demonstrate their capabilities and technology advances, and not just on paper.

Zero power wireless sensors are now available, which bring together new low power wireless ICs with energy harvesters (which harvest energy from heat, light or motion, for example) and the appropriate form of energy storage and conditioning.

In this article we share some of our research for the new IDTechEx report, Electric Motors for Electric Vehicles 2012-2022.