Energy harvesting promises to power all sorts of consumer devices, often with nothing more than the movement or the heat from your body. Several companies around the world already offer these products, primarily for controlling lighting and temperature-control systems, but many experts believe the market for the technology will explode thanks to electronic gadgets being developed for the Internet of Things.
“It’s huge,” said Graham Martin, CEO of the EnOcean Alliance, a San Ramon-based group of businesses that promotes wireless energy-harvesting technologies.
With the Internet of Things expected to incorporate billions of devices, “if they’re all battery-powered, we’ll have a problem because there’s not enough lithium in the world,” he added. “So a lot of them will have to use energy harvesting.”
Body power is among the most basic forms of the technology. When certain materials are squeezed or stretched, the movement of their atoms creates an electrical charge. Automatic watches have employed the concept for decades, for example, by winding themselves when their user moves their arm. Now, the same concept is being considered for a multitude of other devices.
Philips, the consumer electronics giant, sells a switch that wirelessly operates the lights in a room, powered only by the tap of a finger. A similar light switch developed by EcoHarvester of Berkeley, displayed at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, gets its energy when someone just gives it a turn.
According to energy consultant Christine Hertzog, leg power also has possibilities. By generating electricity from students walking across a floor, she has blogged, “schools could harness the pitter-patter of little feet to power some of their building needs.”
In fact, some European nightclubs already supply some of their energy from people dancing on floors, which compress to generate electricity.
Apple has recently been looking into a different approach. In a patent it obtained last year, the Cupertino company proposed using magnets beside a circuit board with printed coils to generate electricity “when a user shakes the system or when the user walks or runs while holding the device.” The consumer products leviathan said it envisions the technology being useful for video recorders, cameras, laptops and other devices.
Bionic Power of Canada has developed a walking-powered knee brace with Canadian and U.S. military officials to recharge battery-powered devices for soldiers in the field.
However, coaxing consistent energy from gadgets can be complex. For one thing, the motion that generates the electricity has to be constant to be useful. Also, the amount of power the devices produce depends on the person using them, according to a Columbia University study this year. It determined that taller people on average provide about 20 percent more power than shorter ones when walking, running or cycling.
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