Battery Free Power For The IoT

About

EMD aims to endlessly power remote nodes which form the backbone of the IoT. Batteries can be used but short life, environmental concerns and OPEX cost at the time of replacement make these a questionable alternative to the EMD approach which is energy harvested from the node’s surroundings. We can use light, heat and movement (vibration) as an energy source – it’s free and everlasting! Nodes constructed with low-power electronic devices are a pre-requirement for the IoT, battery or EH powered. There are many applications in hand-held or close-to-hand devices where batteries will do just fine. EH comes into its own where the IoT node is located in great numbers and in remote or dangerous locations. An example: Utilities - gas, water and electricity are delivered to your home via extensive infrastructures. There is around 100,000 data logger/transmitter systems placed on the water network today. Batteries have a 5/10 year life.  Nevertheless, they still require replacement. 100,000 units at £160 per unit + fitting (£200/unit) = £36 million in OPEX cost. EH should be specified for any application where the cost or risk–to – operator of battery replacement is substantial. Another aspect is physical size and weight – generally a battery will weigh more than an EH device. Our example is our battery - free node with a life expectancy of 20 years – the total weight of the node (EH/sensors/RF transmitter) is 10g, its size 35x14x6mm. The battery pack required to run the device for 20 years would weigh 69g and its size is 37x54x7.5mm. This is an important consideration for aero/automotive/space/applications, or where rotating mass is critical. The customer’s problem? A one-life energy source has limitations – to get a reasonable life in service, it may be necessary to limit data updates or the volume of data sent per transmission – reducing the potential of the IoT before it really starts.    What is their pain? OPEX costs, network failure, loss of customer confidence, all of this pain can be attributed to a discharged battery.   How big is the problem? Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent from 2014, and will reach 25 billion by 2020. A 1% failure of devices due to dud batteries will mean that 4.9 million devices will lose connectivity in 2015, rising to 25 million in 2020. Forbes Contributor Gil Press has this to say: Janus Bryzek, known as “the father of sensors” (and a VP at Fairchild Semiconductor), thinks there are multiple factors “accelerating the surge” in interest. First, there is the new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, “enabling almost unlimited number of devices connected to networks.” Another factor is that four major network providers—Cisco, IBM, GE and Amazon—have decided “to support IoT with network modification, adding Fog layer and planning to add Swarm layer, facilitating dramatic simplification and cost reduction for network connectivity.” Last but not least, Bryzek mentions new forecasts regarding the IoT opportunity, with GE estimating that the “Industrial Internet” has the potential to add $10 to $15 trillion (with a “T”) to global GDP over the next 20 years, and Cisco increasing to $19 trillion its forecast for the economic value created by the “Internet of Everything” in the year 2020.  “This is the largest growth in the history of humans,” says Bryzek. These mind-blowing estimates from companies developing and selling IoT-related products and services, no doubt have helped fuel the media frenzy. But what do the professional prognosticators say? Gartner estimates that IoT product and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion in 2020. IDC forecasts that the worldwide market for IoT solutions will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020. Financial consideration   A coin cell battery typically costs around £0.50 at volume discounts – if 1% of batteries fail or discharge pa, the current cost in hardware (battery) would be £2.45 billion. Add the cost of the operator’s time in replacing the battery (£5.00 – a low estimate, most companies have £500 + day rates for their personnel), the cost rises to an astonishing £24.5 billion (labour) + £2.45 Bn hardware = £26.95 Billion spent replacing batteries. This is a problem of gargantuan proportions. Customer’s view Our existing customers (in industry, utilities and automotive) want our products because they reduce OPEX and/or allow greater volumes of data to be transmitted more often. Expert opinion Extract taken from ‘Element 14’ - Farnell (world-wide electronics component supplier, discussing energy harvesting for the IoT) “Consider, now, that most of those billions of connected things are wireless, sensor-based terminals collecting data, that many of them are quite small and that they may well be relatively inaccessible. So how do you power these stand-alone IoT nodes and do so at a low cost? Batteries? Nope. Struggling to fit a battery into a tiny package in an inaccessible space is not an effective solution. What’s more the cost of maintaining, replacing and discarding billions of batteries would be astronomical (not to mention the enormity of the human labor issue)”. Current customer base Customers: (NDA’s prevent us from naming them) - 1 x F1 team: Based on the original work done at PERA on EH for TPMS, EMD is developing a tyre sensing system for an F1 client. Product this year. - 1 x Industrial client using EH to power a monitoring system This work has led to the development of what we believe is the smallest autonomous node powered by vibrational EH in the world today. It measures G force and temperature from inside a plastic moulding for the whole of the moulding’s life. Products will be in service late this year. - 1 x water co who will be using our EH systems to replace batteries used on their remote data logging and GPRS transmitters: The problem is the multiplicity of data logging/GPRS transmission devices on the water network. They are all battery powered and it’s a massive task to replace all the batteries – EH is a viable solution – this is a work-in-progress. Intellectual Property (IP) We have a body of patents relating to vibrational energy harvesting and are about to embark on new R&D which will utilise thermal and PV energy harvesters. Our aim over the next 2 years is the development of a robust Intellectual Property platform which spans all forms of EH.  EMD EH tech in action Eureka video – the oval PCB working for the 1st time! In the video clip, you can see the vibrating table exciting the piezo element, a ‘scope trace showing the capacitor state-of-charge - listen for the ‘beep’ signifying a data transmission and watch the capacitor charge level fall at the time of transmission – finally, see the transmission received by the receiver.