Harvesting, Scavenging Ambient Energy

November 21, 2009 – Vol.14 No.35

HARVESTING, SCAVENGING AMBIENT ENERGY.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

If governments can’t turn down the planet’s thermostat through policy, then disruptive innovation will have to do the job. Currently, available clean and renewable energies as well as new inventions will be needed to displace the burning of oil, coal and natural gas if their emissions can’t be checked.

We’ve only scratched the surface of what might be possible in energy innovation. For example, compared with research and development in wind and solar energy there’s little focus on harvesting ambient energies. There’s energy in our immediate surroundings that could possibly be captured, stored and put to work. There’s untapped energy everywhere.

--- Kinetic vibrational energy. The vibrating compressor in refrigerators and air conditioning systems is lost energy that could be captured and used. Similarly, the always vibrating and jiggling internal combustion engine in our cars is shaking off energy that could be converted to electricity, stored and consumed in a hybrid drive system to make our cars more efficient.

--- Sound wave energy. Our voices, music from a CD player, a noisy car or truck are all small vibrations that our sensitive ears capture and turn into a signal that our brains can interpret. It takes energy to make sound. Why can’t devices be invented that turn sound back into energy and store it?

--- Thermoelectric energy. There’s nothing new here. Heat has been used to make electricity directly in small amounts for decades. Naturally, the first thought is to capture the thermal energy in sunlight and turn it directly into electricity. But there are other sources of heat that might be candidates: the waste heat from furnaces and hot water heaters, the heat that radiates from a kitchen range, the heat that’s expelled from air conditioning units. Why can’t electricity be generated and stored every time a pizza is cooked or cookies are baked?

--- Radio Waves. As both Nicola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi showed the world in the late 1800s electromagnetic radiation (now known as radio waves) is energy in the air that sensitive devices can pick up. Tesla wanted to transmit electricity that way. Marconi chose communications and succeeded. Now the skies are filled with electromagnetic radiation servicing radio, television and cell phones in very small amounts. Why not harvest what those devices don’t absorb and store it for later use?

One company that’s working in the field of storing harvested ambient energy in small amounts is Infinite Power Solutions, of Littleton, Colorado. Infinite is developing thin-film single cell batteries to power microelectronics such as remote/autonomously powered wireless sensors, security systems, remote controls, memory and real-time clock back up, semi-active RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and powered cards.

The company has recently announced the immediate availability of what it calls the ”world's most powerful solid-state, thin-film, single cell battery on the market: the THINERGY(TM) MEC102.” The very thin battery cell ( 5 stacked are less than a millimeter thick) is meant to be a permanent component of an electronic device and survive 10,000 deep discharge cycles or have an expected lifetime of 20 years.

Infinite Power Solutions isn’t saying that its batteries could someday be used to store ambient energy in buildings or vehicles. But the company, as well as its partners, recognize the availability of ambient energy as well as the scavenging and harvesting of it, even giving energy harvesting the initials EH. Those partners working in EH areas include:

--- AdaptivEnergy: Kinetic (Piezo-based) EH (Harvesting energy from force, strain, vibration.)

--- Sanyo: Solar EH (Harvesting energy from ambient light.)

--- EnOcean Alliance and Ferro Solutions: Electrodynamic / Inductive EH (Harvesting energy from movement, vibration, changing magnetic fields.)

--- Powercast: Radio Frequency (RF) EH (Harvesting energy from radio waves.)

--- Nextreme Thermal Solutions and Perpetua: Thermal Electric Generation (TEG) EH (Harvesting energy from heat.)

With these companies, ambient EH is in the micro-products stage. But, many technologies start small. Lithium batteries were first successful powering small electronics, now the same batteries power cars. Maybe it’s possible that EH technologies will jump from micro to macro, from powering sensors to providing scavenged power for our homes. Maybe EH is the next energy big thing.

Links:

Infinite Power Solutions
http://www.infinitepowersolutions.com

AdaptivEnergy
http://www.adaptivenergy.com

Sanyo
http://www.semicon.us.sanyo.com

EnOcean Alliance
http://www.enocean-alliance.org

Powercast
http://www.powercastco.com

Ferro Solutions
http://www.ferrosi.com

Nextreme Thermal Solutions
http://www.nextreme.com (not connecting at time of publication)

Perpetua
http://www.perpetuapower.com