News & Analysis
Comment
DrQuine
Will efficient energy harnessing lead to new regulations? If our devices had ...
I_B_GREEN
MIT develops tri-source energy harvest control IC
Peter Clarke
7/10/2012 9:27 AM EDT
LONDON – Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed the control circuitry for an energy harvesting platform that can work with natural light, heat and vibrations.
The ability to combine solar, thermal and vibration energy sources is useful because many of these sources are intermittent and therefore a multisource architecture is able to capture and deliver power under a wider circumstances. However, the energy levels and optimization and control strategies are also diverse. According to MIT thermoelectric harvest sources typically produce only 0.02 to 0.15 volts, while photovoltaic cells generate 0.2 to 0.7 volts while vibration sources can produce up to 5 volts.
Up until now the simplest and commonest strategy has been simply to switch between the highest energy generation source, but wasting the energy input from other sources.
Co-ordinating the energy sources in real-time to produce a constant usable output requires a specialized control system which has been designed in a chip developed by doctoral student Saurav Bandyopadhyay, under MIT professor Anantha Chandrakasan, is described in a paper published in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.
It has a dual-path architecture allowing energy to be used directly or to be stored and the switch matrix and the control circuits are implemented in a 0.35-micron CMOS process.
Related links and articles:
Smart Energy top ten 'how to' articles in first half of 2012
MicroGen chooses X-Fab to make energy harvest MEMS
Energy-harvesting kit features modules powered by sunlight, temp difference
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
prabhakar_deosthali
7/11/2012 12:17 PM EDT
This mulch-purpose energy harvesting solution is really a good power source alternative for circuits working remotely in harsh industrial environments where the heat, vibration and sunlight could be usefully deployed to drive the electronics itself. So rather than protecting the circuits from environment we now need circuits to be exposed to the environment to have effective energy harvesting
Sign in to Reply
tb1
7/11/2012 3:08 PM EDT
With all the TV, radio, WiFi, CDMA, GSM, WiMax, LTE radio waves (not to mention 60Hz) we are getting bombarded with everywhere, I'm surprised that there aren't any radio-wave energy harvesting devices.
Sign in to Reply
I_B_GREEN
7/12/2012 12:10 PM EDT
there are many
but power falls off at the cube root of distance.
So only if you are close to a RF source will it be practical
Sign in to Reply
DrQuine
7/15/2012 6:06 PM EDT
Will efficient energy harnessing lead to new regulations? If our devices had extremely efficient RF energy capturing, they would do so at the cost of reducing range and transmission quality of the source transmitter. Assuming that the energy harvesting doesn't impede the activities of the transmitters, the ability to switch between sources is a creative way to expand energy sources and provide power under a variety of conditions.
Sign in to Reply