As 2023 closes, and 2024 closes in, it seems the movement around ambient energy-harvesting battery-free IoT is stepping up. Scandinavian duo ONiO and Epishine have struck a deal, they have said, to “bring to life a shared vision of self-powered IoT devices” based on a combination of the former’s battery-less microcontrollers and the latter’s printed solar cells.
The announcement follows a rush, of sorts, of similar activity, covered in these pages. Last week, there was a niche committee vote at a meeting of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to decide whether ‘ambient’ IoT, to enable energy-harvesting in battery-less cellular devices, should be included as a work item in development of the Release 19 of the 5G NR standard.
A couple of months earlier, France-based Dracula Technologies, with an energy-sucking low-light solution for passive (battery-less) LoRaWAN, said it is preparing a new production facility with capacity for 150 million commercial units per year. In the summer, RCR Wireless covered EU research that IoT, the tech movement supposed to save the planet, is destroying the planet – with about 78 million batteries from battery-powered IoT devices scheduled to be dumped globally every day by 2025 – if nothing is done about it.
At the start of the year, ABI Research predicted that energy harvesting IoT solutions will start to gain some commercial traction in 2023, and that printed electronics, in the form of circuit boards and batteries, will remain a work-in-progress for some time yet. “Energy harvesting companies… have all tended to be engineering experiments; however, many are… being commercialised at scale,” it said in January.
And now, at the end of December, ONiO and Epishine, two Nordic unknowns (to us), from Norway and Sweden, respectively, have said they want to bring “100 percent batteryless IoT” to market “to eliminate the scourge of battery waste”. It seems right to give the story airtime. The pair called it a “groundbreaking model of eco-friendly, autonomous electronics” that “cut down on electronic waste and… running costs”.
Epishine has run tests, apparently, on their combined solution – one’s battery-less microcontrollers, the other’s solar energy cells – and seen “exceptional cold start capabilities, powering up in mere seconds”. This is “a tall order for other technologies that need several minutes”, they declared. The combined solution and the working alliance are a “call to action for a robust Nordic initiative aimed at advancing sustainable IoT devices across the industry”, they said.
Kjetil Meisal, chief executive at ONiO, explained: “Our alliance… marks… the start of a Nordic industry initiative to drive sustainable electronics into the future. With Epishine’s organic solar cells and unique ability to harness energy from low light conditions, combined with our extremely energy-efficient microcontrollers, we’re seamlessly integrating the upper class of solar and semiconductor technologies. This paves the way for the next generation of IoT devices – sustainable, maintenance-free, and truly autonomous.”
Anders Kottenauer, chief executive at Epishine, commented: “This alliance is not just about combining two cutting-edge technologies; it is about reducing reliance on traditional battery systems and leading the charge towards sustainable electronics. Together, we are crafting devices that are not only self-sustaining but are also a testament to the power of sustainable innovation.”
A story to watch in 2024, certainly.
