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Energy Harvesting: Scientists Look Beyond Standard Batteries for Powering IoT and Wearable Devices
The Internet of Things (IoT) envisions a world scattered with devices and sensors that collect and transmit data about almost anything. But a bottleneck to the vision is being able to keep these devices powered for long periods of time. Batteries lose charge quickly and the maintenance costs of battery replacement in the field for many devices is too expensive.
Increasingly some of the larger devices, meters and sensors in the field are being powered by solar. For smaller devices, new techniques are being investigated. This area of research is being called “energy harvesting“. Scientists look at many different alternative external sources of energy, including solar, thermal, wind, and kinetic energy. The global market for energy harvesting devices is expected to be $4.2 billion by 2019.
As an example of mechanical energy harvesting, some scientists are researching how energy from human movement can be used to power smartphones and wearable devices. The army, for example, is investigating devices that strap to a soldier’s leg that captures mechanical energy as the soldier walks. Noel Soto, a project engineer at the Army Natick Soldier Research Center, said that “we are converting the movement of the knees when you walk into useful power. We have found out through studies that soldiers are carrying a heavy load and a lot of that weight, 16 to 20 pounds for a 72-hour mission, is due to batteries.”
Just the movements of tapping and scrolling on your smartphone might be able to produce enough energy that can feed back into the phone to power it. Nelson Sepulveda, associate professor at Michigan State University, said that “what I foresee, relatively soon, is the capability of not having to charge your cell phone for an entire week, for example, because that energy will be produced by your movement.”
