The Economist has has written an interesting article about wireless power as envisioned by Telsa and today’s efforts on ambient RF energy harvesting:
Power from thin air
Wireless technology: It is already possible to send electricity without wires. Can devices be powered using ambient radiation from existing broadcasts?
Powercast demos prelude to mobile network RF energy harvester
Directed RF energy harvester demo is stepping stone to full ambient RF harvesters that can siphon energy from ubiquitous mobile networks
“After setting up an RF energy-harvesting demo at this week’s Sensors Expo collocated with ESC Chicago, Powercast’s director of marketing Harry Ostaffe presented a paper that outlined the concepts and paths to what he believes to be the endgame: full ambient RF harvesting capabilities that sip power from ubiquitous mobile networks and eliminate batteries and direct RF power sources completely.” Read more…
Powercast presentation - Power Out of Thin Air (PDF)
Powercast will participate as an exhibitor at the 2010 Sensors Expo & Conference. At the event Power will be demonstrating a battery-free wireless sensor module powered by RF energy and designed for ultra-low power consumption. The sensor module provides temperature and humidity data to an access point along with the received signal strength (RSSI) and the ID number of the Powercaster™ transmitter from which it is receiving power.
Powercast has recently released the P1110 and P2110 Powerharvester™ Receivers which are capable of converting radio waves in the range of 850-950 MHz into DC power. The demonstration sensor module uses the P2110 Powerharvester receiver to store the received energy into a capacitor, and then performs a voltage boost to supply the module components will a regulated voltage. Both the P1110 and P2110 enable a microcontroller to determine the signal strength of the received power, as well as to recover low-rate data encoded in the power broadcasted from the power transmitter.
Harry Ostaffe, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Powercast, will also be delivering two presentations during the event. During the pre-conference symposium on June 7, 2010 he will speak on “Design Techniques for RF Energy Harvesting Devices”, and during the main conference on June 8, 2010 he will also present “Power Out of Thin Air: Ambient RF Energy Harvesting for Wireless Sensors”.
Powercast’s exhibit and wireless sensor demonstration will be located at Booth 1022 in the exhibition hall.
Powercast announced the release of new RF Powerharvester receivers. The P1110 and P2110 Powerharvester receivers offer additional functionality for power management and intelligent control. They are designed for the 915 MHz band, but have a wide bandwidth which includes other commonly used frequencies. The components work with any standard 50-ohm antenna.
Lot’s of people have an interest in harvesting RF energy as a “free” source of power. It’s important though to understand the applications that have a good fit and those that don’t.
At the 2010 CES, an RCA-branded device called the Airnergy WiFi Energy Harvester was demonstrated. The device has an RF energy harvester and an internal battery. It was claimed that the device recharged most of a BlackBerry battery in 90 minutes. We can only conclude that was from the internal battery and not from a WiFi router (a typical WiFi router puts out only 100mW). We’ve posted below the CES video and an entertaining analysis of this device by David Jones of the Electronics Engineering Video Blog.
Dave Jones - EEV Blog
RCA Airnergy video from 2010 CES
Darnell Group has determined that the “crossover” from the “Introduction” phase to the “Growth” phase for energy harvesting and related micro battery products will take place in the 2009/10 timeframe. Their brief news report can be read here.
Sensors Magazine recently published the article “RF Energy Harvesting Enables Wireless Sensor Networks” by Harry Ostaffe of Powercast. The article is a brief introduction to RF energy harvesting: what it is, what it does, and how it enables wireless sensor networking applications.
Powercast will be demonstrating RF energy harvesting at the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting & Storage Conference in Denver (USA) on Nov 3-4, 2009. On display will be Powercast’s RF energy harvesting technology integrated with wireless sensors from Texas Instruments, Jennic, and EnOcean.
All of the demonstration modules are battery-free and are powered by RF energy that is converted to DC by Powercast’s P2100 Powerharvester module and stored in a supercapacitor. Harry Ostaffe of Powercast will also be giving a presentation on Practical Applications of RF Energy Harvesting.
Product Design & Development (PDD) magazine profiled energy harvesting in “The Brainstorm” section of their August 2009 issue. The questions asked of the contributors were:
“What is the future of energy harvesting? What markets will energy harvesting have the greatest impact upon?”
http://e-ditionsbyfry.com/olive/ODE/PDD/Default.aspx?href=PDD/2009/08/01
A new energy harvesting group has been created on LinkedIn - Energy Harvesting and MicroPower.
This group is for professionals and researchers focused on products, applications, and solutions based on Energy Harvesting and MicroPower systems. Typical applications will include wireless sensors for environmental controls, building automation, condition monitoring, and energy management. Sources for Energy Harvesting and MicroPower include solar, thermal, vibration, RF, and motion.
Energy Harvesting and Micro-Power