Energy Harvesting

An electronic paper display powered by energy harvesting technology can be used to provide a display on batteryless Internet of Things devices.

Will you ever be able to charge your mobile device, car and even clothing with flexible solar cells? Researchers are studying whether the now-experimental technology could someday be mass-produced and commercialized, and some of the issues that have to be resolved, including the environmental impact.

At the IDTechEx Show! Europe, Silent Sensors introduced a new supercapacitor that is very flexible and able to withstand high temperatures, which is necessary for tire manufacture and production.

Designed for embedding in space-constrained consumer designs like smart cards or hearing aids, the new chip builds on Powercast's existing Powerharvester receiver (PCC110), which has been deployed in industrial and commercial wireless power systems for seven years.

This technology is critical for tomorrow's unmanned aerial vehicles, solar cars and other electric vehicles. It can be used to generate substantial power over small surfaces with minimal impact to vehicle design criteria.

This article provides an overview smart windows.

In thermoelectrics TE, there is currently no huge reinvention at the applicational level as with solar roads and windows reinventing photovoltaics or at the technology level as with airborne wind energy reinventing electrodynamic harvesting of wind.

Engineers have developed a thin-film system that can be applied to sources of waste heat to produce energy at levels unprecedented for this kind of technology.

Kinetic energy includes everything from the g-force and vibrations of the ride to the screams of the users. The devices fitted on to the train's carriages capture this energy before converting into electrical energy, which is stored in a power management unit throughout the day. This unit is then removed from the carriages by staff and deposited into the on-site mobile charging point, allowing guests to charge their mobile phone.

Electric cars are seen as the sustainable future of transport. But they are only truly sustainable if the electricity used to charge them comes from sustainable sources and not from fossil fuels.