The stat that tends to get quoted back to RCR Wireless whenever the conversation turns to ambient IoT is that 78 million batteries from battery-powered IoT devices will get dumped every day by 2025 – if nothing is done about it. This is IoT’s dirty secret, as we have written – that the tech movement that was supposed to save the planet is destroying the planet. In the end, the only way to resolve this crisis and absolve the industry’s shame is to jettison the battery, altogether; not just to make it live longer, or to fix it to a biodegradable substrate, but to get-rid, completely.
The calculation emerged exactly 12 months ago; it is only six months until 2025, and it needs re-plotting. But, even with a rising tide of innovation, energy-harvesting technologies have not come far enough to make a difference, yet. The wave needs to crash, urgently and extensively, for massive IoT to be properly green. Research firm GlobalData has just put out a press note that says “energy harvesting technologies are set to transform IoT”. They will, hopefully; but will they quickly enough to make the sector’s green credentials worth their marketing dollars?
What is clear is that the benefits of energy-harvesting technology stand to go beyond just a lower environmental impact – “to extend device lifespan, reduce maintenance costs, and transform power sources,” writes GlobalData. There are positive noises.Dracula Technologies, developing low-light energy-harvesting technology for passive (battery-less) IoT, has said its new mega factory in France is ready to roll. The likes of E-peas, Nowi, and Sequans all claim progress in the field – by harnessing photovoltaic, vibration, thermo-electric, and radio energy, variously.
But there are challenges, of course. Saurabh Daga, project manager for disruptive tech at GlobalData, comments: “While energy harvesting technologies hold great promise, addressing challenges such as energy variability, high manufacturing costs, and device efficiency is essential to fully realize their benefits. Collaborative efforts among stakeholders, including manufacturers and researchers, are crucial for overcoming these hurdles and driving innovation and widespread adoption of these technologies.”
Usefully, GlobalData has produced some research, as part of its Innovation Explorer database, into prominent energy-harvesting solutions from various firms. RCR Wireless has covered plenty of innovations in the space before, but none of these; and so it is representing four (*) different examples, here, of how ambient IoT is moving ahead.
* Note: GlobalData presents four examples of energy-harvesting in IoT in its marketing, but it is unclear, from their descriptions, how two of them harvest ambient energy. One is a ‘supercapacitor’ that supports energy-harvesting cells, and the other sounds more like on-device AI, which simply reduces power requirements. But they have been included, anyway (#5 and #6), and two others have been inserted from the RCR Wireless archives to keep complete the quartet.
1 | Ambient Photonics
“US-based startup Ambient Photonics has unveiled a bifacial solar cell technology designed to power connected devices in low-light indoor conditions. This technology can harvest energy from both sides of the solar cell, significantly boosting efficiency. Using dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC), Ambient Photonics’ innovation is effective even in low-light environments, offering a sustainable alternative to disposable batteries in devices such as remote controls, electronic shelf labels, and sensors.”
2 | Sony Semiconductor
“Sony Semiconductor Solutions has developed an energy harvesting module leveraging electromagnetic wave noise, providing a stable power supply for low-power IoT devices amid increasing sophistication and popularity. This innovative technology utilizes electromagnetic noise from electronic devices, offering efficient power generation and enabling device status identification, promising diverse applications across industries.”
3 | Dracula Technologies
France-based Dracula Technologies is producing an organic photovoltaic (OPV) solar cell which can be printed in any size, depending on the required power output, onto an 0.3mm adhesive sticker on a regular inkjet printer using special OPV ink. OPV technology draws power in murky conditions, such as in warehouses and factories, where the luminous flux per unit area (lux), which measures illuminance, goes as low as 500. As a frame of reference, outdoor light registers at closer to 10,000 lux. The solution from Dracula Technologies – branded LAYER, as an acronym for ‘light as your energetic response’, and presented for marketing purposes as a bat-shaped OPV printout – works at 200 lux, and even down to 100 lux. The company is ramping up production at a new smart factory in France.
4 | Nowi
Dutch semiconductor manufacturer Nowi, a specialist in energy-harvesting IoT chips, has designed a product, Diatom, to extract power from a range of ‘energy harvesters’ to charge batteries and supercapacitors. It has a wide power input range, from microwatts to milliwatts, and an ultra-fast max power point tracker (MPPT). It also has a cold-start feature to enable batteryless applications – which, in theory, reduce battery maintenance costs, as well as offering a more sustainable power option. Nowi name-checked smart home gadgetry, personal wearable tech, retail sensors and scanners, and industrial IoT devices, among candidate IoT applications. The company, based in Delft, is the chip partner in a small-sized energy-harvesting NB-IoT module from Deutsche Telekom and Murata; it has similar work with Sigfox, and is also engaged with Huawei and HiSilicon, among others.
5 | CAP-XX
“Australian electronics manufacturer CAP-XX has launched a miniature GY cylindrical supercapacitor designed for IoT, medical, and other space-constrained devices. Measuring just 5mm in diameter and 12mm in length, this supercapacitor offers high peak pulse power and operates across a wide temperature range. It supports energy harvesting for applications such as HVAC sensors and portable medical devices, providing a reliable power source with minimal energy losses and compliance with environmental standards.”
6 | POLYN Technology
“Israeli startup POLYN Technology has introduced Vibrosense, an ultra-low power AI chip designed for vibration pre-processing. This chip reduces the volume of sensor data sent to the cloud, conserving power and facilitating energy-harvesting designs. Vibrosense uses a neuromorphic analog signal processor (NASP) to preprocess vibration data at the sensor level, reducing computational burden and power consumption. This technology is particularly beneficial for applications such as structural health monitoring and industrial automation.”
