A Bountiful Harvest ... of Energy

Author: Larry Fisher, Practice Director, Automotive, Energy and Emerging Technologies

Published: 14 Mar 2011

We have long been able to capture small amounts of ambient energy and put them to work for us; witness the “self-winding” watch, which captures the energy of motion and puts it to good use keeping the watch running, or bicycle dynamos, which convert the energy of your peddling into electricity that can power the bike’s headlamp. Over the last decade, however, increasing interest has been focused on the capability of such energy harvesting (also referred to as energy scavaging and power harvesting) to run certain types of systems, because of its environmental friendliness (no batteries to replace) and its ability to power devices without requiring a connection to the power grid.

The full text of this Insight is available to subscribers of the Electronics Research Service and the Clean Energy Research Service and the Clean Energy Research Theme and the Wireless Connectivity Research Service.

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