The IoT sector is emerging: the amount of internet connected devices in the industrial domain is expected to increase to 25 billion in Europe within a few years. The potential of ultralow power industrial IoT starts to disrupt the industry ranging from predictive maintenance on railways, container cargo tracking to smart city sensoring. The vast majority of these devices is equipped with a battery, which results in one of the main obstacles to make a success of the IoT-revolution. The costs of the battery and battery replacement every 3 to 5 years are disproportionate to the total cost of a low power IoT-device, and therefore a major bottleneck for industry companies to start implementing IoT-ecosystems. Furthermore the battery replacement of IoT-devices results in vast amounts of chemical waste and constitutes a complex logistical challenge since a typical low power IoT-ecosystem consists in general of thousands of devices at hard to reach places TWTG R&D B.V. has developed the Tryst module, a sustainable and cost-efficient alternative for batteries by means of light energy harvesting for IoT-devices. The Tryst module harvests enough energy to continuously supply an IoT-sensor in very low light conditions, since it requires only 200 lux light for 4 hours per day. Tryst is the ideal solution since it provides IoT-energy supply which is 13 times more cost-efficient than conventional batteries and dismisses complex battery replacement campaigns. In addition Tryst reduces the projected amounts of chemical waste caused by battery usage in IoT-ecosystems. Therefore the Tryst module is the breakthrough innovation, which will make vast and growing amounts of IoT-batteries dispensable and a necessary enabler to further accelerate the IoT-revolution. To convince the market of the added value of the Tryst module a demonstration project needs to be executed. In the Phase 1 SME instrument project the preparatory actions for this demonstration project are taken.
