Energy Harvesters, Thin-Film Batteries, Micro-Channel Fuel Cells Start Production

"The construction industry is starting to replace copper with silicon, and that's just of the potentially big applications for wireless electronics, powered by energy harvesting, argued Jeff Shepard, president of the Darnell Group (Corona, Calif.). Darnell forecasts sales of more than 200 million units for energy harvesting and thin-film batteries over the next 24 months, primarily driven by wireless connections and energy harvesting replacing power and signal wiring in buildings. The economics are compelling. Shepard noted the example of a recent warehouse that installed a wireless system instead of traditional copper wiring and saved $70.000 in material cost and a week in installation time, "And that's using today's relatively expensive batteries and harvesting technologies that are just starting production," he said, "before the typical cost reduction of silicon with volume." Wireless building security and energy management systems are already in use in Europe in droves, he noted.
Making real inroads in commercial applications of energy harvesting is the Siemens spin-off EnOcean GmbH (Oberhaching, Germany), with its wireless light switches and sensors now reportedly installed in more than 10.000 buildings, primarily for cost savings in commercial projects in Europe. 'The goal is wireless controls,' said applications engineering manager Eugene You. 'And that means no wire for power either and no battery.'
The mechanical movement of pushing a wall switch changes the flux in a coil to generate a very short electrical pulse. That's enough to send a very low-power radio signal to turn a light on or off, eliminating the need to install wiring. Key is the combination of energy harvesting with very efficient radio design.
Other systems can enable a smart building to sense and adjust light of heat to cut energy usage. Although the company is focusing on the building automation market, EnOcean is also getting calls from folks interested in everything from wireless lighting control for boats to call buttons for aircrafts to automatic transmissions for bicycles."

(Source www.semiconductor.net, 13.06.2008)