Problem: Waste and overconsumption of resources are major challenges in modern societies, as it leads to unnecessary environmental burdens and economic loss. To lower the loss, monitoring building health and energy consumption are of great importance to ensure that the technical installations and the building itself perform. Modern monitoring sensors measuring the building health and energy consumption (e.g. temperature, moisture sensors) are operated wireless on batteries, to allow easy and cost-efficient installation. In the execution phase, it however becomes overly expensive replacing the batteries, due to the location of the monitoring sensors. These are often located inside building constructions (inside the insulation, behind walls, floors, ceiling, in concrete, etc.) making access difficult and demanding. To avoid batteries energy harvester technologies may be used to obtain energy from the surroundings. The existing energy harvesting technologies do, however, not work inside the building constructions hereby calling on new technology to address this challenge
Solution: The patented RePower solution is created to solve this industry-wide challenge not properly addressed by any of the competing technologies. RePower deliver battery-less and maintenance-free sensors to wireless monitor e.g. buildings, powerlines or machines, by harvesting the energy from the outside of multicore power cables, without damaging the cable in any way. The RePower’ed sensors can be either encapsulated directly with RePower, used as a separate component, or powering a sensor placed away from the power cable.
Multicore cables are widely present in building constructions, and RePower can therefore be retrofit (by layman) to existing cables throughout the building. RePower thereby disrupts the market for wireless sensor systems, by enabling battery-less sensors in an environment where batteries have been the only option, until today. Compared to other sensor energy sources, RePower is: (A) Designed and optimized for building installations; (B) Cost-efficient; (C) Non-invasive; (D) Long-life; (E) Safe; (F) Made for slim designs.
