The winners of the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Wireless Sensor Networks Awards were announced at the 5th annual conference and exhibition in Berlin, Germany on Wednesday the 17th of April during the keynote sessions.

Supercapacitors replace lithium-ion batteries. Lithium-ion batteries replace nickel metal hydride and lead acid batteries. There are side stories of course. Some supercapacitors replace electrolytic capacitors and others create new applications. However, in this article, we concentrate on replacing lithium-ion batteries.

For more information on the topic of thermoelectrics and how they can be used in energy harvesting applications, attend Energy Harvesting and Storage in Berlin, Germany, on the 17th and 18th of April 2013.

Energy harvesting - harvesting abundant energy from the environment to power small devices or assist larger devices - has secured a sure foot-hold in building and industrial markets, powering wireless sensors to improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase automation.

In this article, we look at other aspects of what will and will not happen with electric vehicles land, water and air in 2013, whether they are hybrid or pure electric.

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.

For the first time in this year's event in Washington DC on the 7th and 8th of November, a third event, focusing on supercapacitor technologies will be co-located, highlighting the advances, applications and adoption trends in this closely related field.

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.

Uniquely, IDTechEx updates its reports on a continuous basis, so purchasers get the latest information. Nowhere is this more important than with electric aircraft in all their shapes and forms because progress is so rapid.

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.

Today, only one type of film - Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) - is used for almost all transparent conductive films with a market size of over $2 billion this year.

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.

EVS26 in Los Angeles this month reminded one of the children's chant, "When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was awful". The networking opportunities were superb, the welcoming reception and the Gala Dinner being truly memorable.

This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors 2013-2023.

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.