Energy harvesting: PMIC, Indoor Solar Cells

Why Energy Harvesting?

Save Environment

Energy harvesting is picking up the pace as battery is a very big problem to the world.

So many electronic devices such as TV remote, wall clocks, multimeters, etc. used batteries and after they are discharged are thrown away. Only a very less percentage gets to recycling plants, most get to the land fills.

Every year billions of dead batteries goes to landfills . Such a bad impact they have on environment as they have harmful chemicals in it.

Business Challenge

If you are using a battery in your product, it has a limited life like a few years. There two major issues with battery power products where energy harvesting could help.

Replacing battery after it is dead is a cost. And even bigger cost to executing the task of replacing the batteries in thousands of products installed in the field, many could be located remotely as well.

So, the battery cost and time and effort required to replace the battery.

There are many application where battery is a commercial challenge like some products are very price sensitive or cannot afford to have bigger batteries to provide longer back up time.

What is the Solution?

There are several companies who are building products which can replace the battery/will make several products battery-free or can significantly reduce the use of battery or extending the battery back up time. This solves both business and environment problem we face today.

Ambient Energy harvesting is not new to us.

We have been using hand driven dynamo chargers for torches, we are using solar panels for electricity. But now energy harvesting is getting into our daily use products. Very soon we will start seeing battery-less products in our surroundings.

⚡Today, truly battery-less🔋devices are possible! With #energyharvesting ⚡

TV remotes, wall clocks, sensor nodes, Electronic Shelf Labels, etc. are some of the potential devices.

Some research work is shown here:

Some other read world examples are:

• PaperiNode: Solar-Powered Epaper Node with LoraWAN
• Electronic Shelf Label using Nowi Energy PMIC

Do you know other products which are using energy harvesting in their product to make it battery free, please do let me know in the comments below.

How to add Energy Harvesting to your product?

If you need to add energy harvesting to your product there are three main things which need to be added other than your existing electronics:

1. Energy Harvester: this will extract the ambient energy and convert it into electrical form. Energy harvester could be PV cells(light) for indoor, outdoor use, harvester for vibration, wind turbine, RF antenna, etc.
2. Energy Harvesting Power management IC (PMIC): helps extract the electrical energy from the harvester in the most efficient manner.
3. Energy Storage Element, which could be store the harvested energy and be used by the electronics when required.

In this article, I will be listing various companies who are working in energy harvesting domain and creating products (Harvesters(Solar cells, Fuel Cells, etc.), PMICs, etc.) which is making energy harvesting possible.

List of Indoor Solar Cell Manufacturers

Manufacturer	Country	Buy from	Power Conversion Efficiency
LIghtricity	United Kingdom	Direct, Distributors	~30%
IXYS Solar (now LittleFuse)	USA	Digikey	~25%
Epishine	Sweden	Farnell, Newark	~13%
Dracula Technologies	France	Direct
Panasonic	Europe	Digikey
PowerFilm Solar	USA	Direct, Mouser, Digikey	~5%
3GSolar	Israel	Direct	~13-19%
GlorySolar	China	Direct, Alibaba
InfinityPV	Denmark	Direct	~2 – 5%
Peafowl Solar Power	Sweden	Direct

List of Energy Harvesting PMIC Manufacturers

PMIC Manufacturer	Country	Buy from?	Some popular devices
E-peas Semiconductor	Belgium	Mouser, Distributors	AEM10300, AEM10330, AEM10940, AEM9041, AEM20940, AEM30300, AEM30330, AEM30940, AEM40940
Nowi Energy	Netherlands	Digikey	NH2D0245
Analog Devices	USA	Mouser, Digikey, Element 14	ADP5092, ADP5091, LTC3105, LTC3119 and many more
Maxim Integrated	USA	Mouser, Digikey, Element 14	MAX20361, MAX17710
Texas Instruments	USA	Mouser, Digikey, Element 14	BQ25570, BQ25504, BQ25505
ST Microelectronics	Switzerland	Mouser, Digikey, Element 14	SPV1050, SPV1040
Infineon (Cypress)	Germany	Mouser, Digikey	S6AE102A, S6AE103A
Trameto	United Kingdom	Direct	Device information is not available online, you need to ask.
Asahi Kasei Microdevices	Japan	Distributors	AP4470, AP4473

In future, I will add some other manufacturers who are manufacturing energy harvesters, also.

If you are aware of any other manufacturer please do let me know I will add to the list so that it will be helpful for engineers working on energy harvesting.