As the deployment of The Internet of Things (IoT) accelerates there is a significant business opportunity in the elimination of disposable batteries from smart sensors within the IoT. To enable this, Trameto is developing a novel power management product family ‘HarvestAll™’ which allows energy harvesting from any form of ambient energy such as light, thermal difference and vibrations; in a market forecast to be worth €3 Billion in 2023.
For these predictions to be realised, micro energy harvesting systems will need to effectively capture all of the available energy using just one energy management device. The technical challenge is that these ambient energy sources have widely different electrical characteristics. E.g. photovoltaic and thermoelectric harvesters are low-voltage DC, resistive, “trickle” sources; electrodynamic harvesters are high-voltage, inductive, “pulsed” sources whilst piezoelectric harvesters are high-voltage AC, capacitive, “bursty” sources.
The development and commercialisation of HarvestAll™ is important for society given the reported and expected of IoT sensors. These sensors can be connected to the electrical mains, where cost and logistics allow, but are typically powered using batteries. However, batteries have very limited lifetimes, for example, a Bluetooth sensor with 5-second measurements would only last 12 months on a lithium (CR2032) battery.
With the huge number of IoT devices currently in operation and with forecasts from industry leaders showing more than a trillion connected devices by 2035 – batteries cannot be a long-term solution for IoT sensor systems and AWD. As a result, there are substantial operational, financial and environmental challenges to replacing batteries.
The objectives of this project were designed to help progress the commercial awareness and understanding of the opportunity that HarvestAll™ can address. Through this project, we aimed to:
- Strengthen our industry relationships
- Enhance and update our market knowledge through primary discussions with industry leaders
- Establish relationships with key international customers - match product definition and roadmaps with customer needs
- Identify a network of international partners with complementary technologies for further product development
- Establish routes to market by building a global supply chain and sales networks
