Energy Harvesting

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.

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.