he Energy Harvesting White Paper Committee is preparing a White Paper on Energy Harvesting elucidating the enormous opportunities of the technology despite a reluctant adoption in some industries.

Although Energy Harvesting methods and devices have reached a credible state-of-art, relatively few devices are currently commercially available and off-the-shelf harvester solutions often require an extensive adaption to the envisaged application. A synopsis of typical energy sources, state-of-the-art materials and transducer technologies for efficient energy conversion, storage and management encompasses a wide range of successful research results. But developing power supplies for actual applications reveals their strong dependence on application-specific installation requirements, power demands and environmental conditions resulting in a less extensive portfolio of successful system integrations.

The industrial challenges for a massive spread of autonomous sensor systems are manifold and diverse. Reliability issues, obsolescence management and supply chains need to be analysed for commercial use in critical applications. On this front, the gap between currently available solutions and use-case scenarios is analysed from the perspective of the user. The white paper then proceeds to identify the key advantages of energy autonomy in environmental, reliability, sustainability and financial terms.

Energy harvesting could lead to a lower CO2 footprint of future IoT devices by adopting environmentally friendly materials and reducing cabling as well as battery replacement. Further research and development is evidently needed to achieve a technology readiness levels acceptable for the industry. From this discussion, this white paper will propose a future research and innovation strategy for industry-ready green microscale IoT devices, as a key and seminal initiative to provide useful information to the different stakeholders involved, encourage more interaction between them and deliver industry ready solutions.

Contact and further information: Thomas Becker, Thobecore (email: thobecore@outlook.de), Michalis Kiziroglou, Imperial College London (email: m.kiziroglou@imperial.ac.uk)

Provided by Thomas Becker (left) and Michalis Kiziroglou (right) PSMA Energy Harvesting White Paper Committee Co-Chairs

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