Energy Harvesting

IDTechEx, the leading Research and Events company covering emerging technologies, has launched new subscription offerings across its range of topics.

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.

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.

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.