he biennial Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) international workshop EnerHarv returned from USA (2022) to Europe for 2024 following its inauguration in Ireland in 2018. It was hosted by the University of Perugia (UNIPG) Italy from 26-28 June, organized by PSMA and a committee of >30 experts from both academia and industry.

It is based on a vision of the PSMA Energy Harvesting Committee (EHC) to 'create a focal point for a community for experts and users of energy harvesting (EH) technologies to share knowledge, best practices, roadmaps, experiences and provide opportunities for collaboration in order to increase the uptake of EH and related technologies, particularly for low power Internet of Things (IoT) applications.' EnerHarv is special and unique in that, whilst most of our community have some expertise in power management and/or IoT wireless sensor network (WSN) edge device applications, it goes further and brings together a broad range of stakeholders from both academia and industry in order to address our vision. To this end, it is neither a traditional academic nor industry-/trade-show-centric workshop, rather it leverages the best features of both event types and creates an experience whereby we can all co-exist, learn, network and most importantly collaborate.

EnerHarv enjoyed a very strong patronage and technical program via commercial sponsors VITALITY, CONNECT, e-peas, Wurth Elektronik, Boston Scientific and Eagleprojects and technical sponsors LoLiPoP IoT, UBIGIoT, ASSIST, IEEE PELS, IEEE EPS, EHN, SFU & China Power Supply Society (CPSS) as its Technical Sponsors. (Details on our committee, program and sponsors can be found on our website - www.EnerHarv.com). This also enabled us to offer very reasonable registration rates (PSMA is a not-for-profit entity). In our opinion and that of many of the participants, it has become the 'must attend' event for the 'Power IoT' ecosystem, including researchers, industry, developers, integrators and end users. It was timed to align with the annual UNIPG summer school (https://www.nipslab.org/nips-summer-school-2024/). Each day we had a mix of technical sessions, demos, posters, panel sessions and of course, lots of networking. It enjoyed a record attendance of 85 participants with 38 presentations, 26 posters and 19 demos. As experienced by participants, networking and fostering collaboration is a huge element of EnerHarv – it is a single track event designed to create fully-immersive and interactive experience. For example on Day 3, just before lunch, we noted >80% of the audience were still in attendance.

In our opening we paid tribute to our dear friend Joe Horzepa, former Executive Director of PSMA, who passed away peacefully on 25th May 2024 and dedicated EnerHarv 2024 in his memory and commemoration. His vision and steady leadership guided PSMA for 30 years. He had a remarkable talent for recruiting and inspiring volunteers from both academia and industry to dedicate their time and energy to fulfilling PSMA's mission to "improve the knowledge of technological and other developments related to power sources." Under his leadership, the association not only solidified its sponsorship of the APEC Conference but also expanded to support other workshops and symposia such as PwrSoC, 3D PEIM, IWIPP, WiPDA and our very own EnerHarv. He played a major role in helping us create and nurture the PSMA EHC and his signing of the 2024 EnerHarv contract was his last official act.

Joe also fostered relationships with IEEE, CPSS, and IPC. His legacy includes the influential PSMA Magnetics workshop, the Power Technology Roadmap, and sponsored APEC Industry Sessions. Joe's personal touch and genuine interest in the lives of his colleagues will be deeply missed.

We opened daily with keynotes.

• On Day 1 Prof. Luca Gammaitoni (UNIPG, Italy), gave us an overview of the €120 M, Italian-government-sponsored VITALITY project involving nine universities. 'Innovative devices for industrial apps' is one of the main themes within the VITALITY portfolio with power sourcing of wireless sensors being one of the research challenges.
• On Day 2 Dr. Daniela Iacopino (Tyndall, Ireland) provided a fascinating and timely insight into the importance of sustainability considerations for energy-harvesting-related materials as part of our 'systems integration and life cycle analysis' daily theme. Daniela gave some nice examples of technology development from SFI CONNECT (commercial sponsor) & other EU-affiliated projects in areas such as sensors, supercaps (a.k.a. – ultracaps) and antennae made from sustainable materials such as crustaceans (chitosan) and wood (cork).
• On Day 3 Bruno Damien (e-peas, Belgium) teed up our 'real world application' daily theme with a presentation showing how self-powered (indoor PV), remotely-programmable ESLs (electronic shelf labels) have become a high-impact application area, leveraging e-peas' power management ICs (PMICs) and indoor solar EH.

In our Transducer session we had speakers from Universities of Glasgow, Utah & Exeter illustrating a wide variety of transducer types (RF, electrochemical and vibrational) for a diverse range of applications (wearables, ocular implants, and railway track monitoring) outlining the technology types, trade offs and system integration challenges.

The Energy Storage session comprised speakers from TDK (rechargeable, solid-state, surface-mount batteries), Nanoramic/FastCap (ultra-wide temperature and low-leakage supercaps) and Edinburgh Napier University (capacitors for flexible and wearable applications).

System integration was covered extensively, focusing on sustainable materials, packaging/ integration and power management in Day 2 and real applications in Day 3.

The Sustainable Materials session had speakers from POLITO & ENEA covering the selection and use of materials for EH and storage devices, including the consideration of materials from renewable sources. On behalf of Erika Goyarvary from CSEM, Daniela Iacopino gave a high-level overview of the recently-published Green ECS (Electronics Components and Systems) white paper, which has a well-defined methodology and process for doing more holistic LCAs (Life Cycle Analysis).

The Materials Packaging/Integration session illustrated the wide range of materials and device considerations needed for components such as anodes for post li-ion batteries (RSE), thermoelectric generators (Univ. of Freiburg) & Perovskite PVs (Tor Vergata Univ. of Rome) for flexible and indoor applications.

In the Power Management session we had academic and industry inputs from Univ. of Catania and e-peas regarding on-chip switched-cap converters and micro-power design optimization, respectively. Sandwiched between these was a fascinating presentation form Newcastle University on intermittent computing and cutting-edge energy and time management, illustrating the need for more software expertise in our ecosystem.

Day 3 was jam-packed with real-life scenarios, in some cases focusing on specific applications (grid condition monitoring – Fraunhofer, smart cities – EagleProjects), in other cases related to technology platforms and tools that enable us to develop self-powered sensors. This included tiny machine learning sensors (ETH Zurich), EH testbeds (Tyndall), plant-microbial cell harvesting (Univ. of Trento) and SMEs that gave us insight into real-life operating scenarios and opportunities (INNOITALY).

Panel sessions were convened each afternoon, typically comprising a series of brief presentations by experts from academia and industry. The Sustainable Materials panel session comprised presentations from Univ. of Trento, RISE, ENEA & Dracula Tech covering fuel cells, transducers and sensors considering materials processes and applications. The Ecosystems panel session was more of an info-sharing and awareness exercise, highlighting the need for collaborative ecosystems to be created and nourished so the benefits can be reaped. Examples and activities from ADI, Tor Vegata University of Rome, Universities of Genoa, Utah and Limerick, EHN and PSMA itself were cited. On the final day, we wrapped up with a Future Direction panel session with an inspiring presentation from SME WisePower on how to progress from R&D to industrial design, an insight from Univ. of Genoa into a promising new technology for self-powering sensors for wind/wave applications and finally some key learnings and methodologies from Univ. of Galway on how to develop system-optimized EH components.

In the Demo Session we saw quite a variety of functional demonstrations of EH (and related) technologies. As something the PSMA EHC has felt very strongly about for many years of putting together numerous events, the lectures and discussions are far more fruitful and impactful when complemented by REAL demos people can touch and see work before their eyes. Such demos covered the use of transducers, energy storage, PMICs (along with the develop environments to immediately utilize), and sensor telemetry data from various WSN implementations. Supporting aspects of the ecosystem, such as an EH testbed, were demonstrated along with some real-world (shipping and proof-of-concept) consumer products and applications. It was great to see strong industry representation of existing and emerging platforms here from Wurth Elektronik, INNOITALY, Ambient Photonics, e-peas, Dracula Technologies & TDK with researchers from Tyndall & TU Delft showing the power of collaboration via their component and testbed demos.

26 posters were on display from academic institutes, research centres and industry partners from Europe and US, primarily based on transducers, discrete and silicon power management and energy storage solutions, with supporting tools and infrastructure (e.g. testbeds) and numerous examples of deployment in real-life applications. Each poster owner was given an opportunity to do an introductory elevator pitch and it proved to be a great mechanism to stimulate dialogue and discussion between attendees on future, potential collaborations. PV and vibrational EH were particularly well represented. The strength and depth of our committee and sponsors was on display at this session with several posters from EU projects VITALITY, UBIGIoT & LoliPoP IoT, Irish SFI research centre CONNECT and CPSS. Too numerous to all detail here, please check out our website for the full listing.

Our daily sessions were opened in Italian style with a warm 'benvenuti' ('welcome') followed by a reveille of 'andiamo' ('let's go')! It was not all business as deep, technical discussions of the day turned into pleasurable, social events in the evening. All participants experienced 'la dolce vita' at EnerHarv, after all when in Rome… (or thereabouts). The first night was capped by a formal dinner in the heart of the beautiful, ancient city of Perugia with spectacular views from the hillside. On the second night the participants took a field trip to the nearby famous, beautifully preserved and serene town of Assisi, home of Saints Francis and Claire. After a walk around and stunning sunset photo ops, the wonderful food and drink at our social event was supplemented by an infusion of some soft jazz (a taster of the forthcoming jazz festival) and some sleight-of-hand of the nicest kind from Mago Silvani, a UNIPG researcher whose not-so-secret talents we harvested for the night!

Organiser and sponsor PSMA was represented by its EHC Co-chairs (& EnerHarv Co-founders) Mike Hayes (Tyndall) & Brian Zahnstecher (PowerRox) as well as Lisa Horzepa supporting from the PSMA Office. We also leveraged heavily from Technical Co-chair Francesco Cottone (UNIPG) and his wonderful support team and General Chair Roberto La Rosa (STMicro). They ran a flawless operation exposing us to the best of Italian scenery, food, culture and of course, hospitality. Perugia is famous for its annual jazz festival that took place a couple weeks after EnerHarv and several participants stayed on to enjoy it.

Proceedings are already available on the EnerHarv website to registered attendees and will become publicly available in the first half of 2025. To get a taste for what you missed, the proceedings of EnerHarv 2018 and 2022 are available on the website (www.EnerHarv.com) – there was no EnerHarv in 2020 due to COVID. EnerHarv 2026 is likely to return to North America and we also hope to have an EnerHarv in Asia at some stage in the not-too-distant future as we look to perpetually expand our Power IoT ecosystem.

Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our EnerHarv Workshop Committee (EWC), Organizer and financial sponsor PSMA, our Commercial & Technical Sponsors as well as our Media Sponsors Bodo's Power Systems and How2Power.

Many seeds were sown for future collaborations and we look forward to 'harvesting' these at future EnerHarv workshops!

Mike Hayes, General Co-Chair, EnerHarv 2024

Brian Zahnstecher, Technical Co-Chair, EnerHarv 2024

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