New Industry Products

E-PEAS and TCT Demonstrate Inductive Energy Harvesting

September 03, 2020 by Hailey Stewart

e-peas and TCT develop an innovative energy harvesting platform that is based on induction.

e-peas continues to lead innovation in the energy harvesting sector - this time through cooperation with French specialist in magnetic components TCT. By bringing together TCT’s engineering expertise in ferromagnetic cores with e-peas’ popular AEMS series of ultra-low power PMICs, the two companies have been able to develop an innovative energy harvesting platform that is based on induction. This will have huge potential within building automation and smart-grid deployments. 

 

E-PEAS and TCT Demonstrate Inductive Energy Harvesting Figure

 

The companies have now demonstrated this platform in action. A video of it can be viewed here.

The demonstration will consist of a compact TCT current generator accompanied by an e-peas AEM30940 PMIC. This current generator will be placed onto an electricity cable (carrying a few amps of AC current). Through induction it will be able to harvest energy from the AC current passing through the cable, with the AEM30940 (in combination with a semi-active rectifier) converting and managing the current delivered. The DC current will subsequently be used to power a connected hardware device comprising multiple sensors and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon connectivity. An LED indicator is included to show that this is in operation. 

The 3µW cold start power of the AEM30940, which is much lower than competing solutions, will prove pivotal in allowing energy to be efficiently harvested from the AC source. Also, thanks to low internal leakage exhibited by this PMIC, it will be able to take care of the storage of extracted energy and provide a regulated voltage to the connected low-power hardware. The AEM30940’s linear converters provide two independents regulated voltages, which thereby eliminates the need of any additional converters. The connected hardware will monitor ambient parameters (temperature, humidity and light levels) and will then transmit this data over the BLE link.

“By using inductance, battery-less control and monitoring units will have the functionality needed to draw energy from electrical cabling that is already deployed. The logistical difficulties of having to periodically replace battery cells can be completely avoided, presenting facilities management with greater convenience and lower operational costs,” states Alexandre Decombejean, Sales Manager at TCT. “The energy harvester attached to the cable is built around a specific soft magnetic material core with high permeability, and will reach an elevated output voltage even with a low current.”

“We have already been able to validate the effectiveness of e-peas technology in harvesting energy from thermal, vibrational, RF and photovoltaic sources. Now, by combining our technology with TCT’s, we have the ability to do so via inductance,” adds Christian Ferrier, CMO of e-peas. “This opens up an array of exciting new market opportunities for us as a leader company in energy harvesting and processing solutions.”

 

About e-peas

e-peas stands for Electronic Portable Energy Autonomous Systems.

The company was founded in 2014 on the conviction that the trillions of connected nodes of the IoT to be deployed in the next few years will require disruptive solutions to extend batteries life-time. Only two ways exist to reach this objective by increasing the amount of harvested energy
and by drastically reducing the energy consumption of all power consuming blocs of the system.

At e-peas, we believe that new applications will ultimately be made possible by the combination of both approaches.

Relying on 15 years of research and its patented disruptive technologies, e-peas offers a portfolio of products including photovoltaic, thermoelectric, vibration, and RF harvesters interface ICs, microcontrollers and sensors solutions, all thought to be easily interfaced in order to improve system robustness and reduce your application development time.