Energy Harvesting White Paper from Sentilla
Pervasive computers enable virtually any measurement to be made across virtually any environment. But how would you power your network? What if you wanted to place the computer in the middle of a field? Or in a tree? Or in the desert? Or a cave? How long would the computer run given alkaline or lithium batteries? Could it draw power from its surroundings? Could it be packaged in a reasonable size?
To this end, they are publishing a white paper that introduces solar, thermal, and vibrational harvesting methods in the context of pervasive computing. They keep the science behind the harvesting techniques at a high level, but give proper size and placement context.
September 19th, 2008 09:20
While the author describes the use of either alkaline or lithium sulphur dioxide cells as alternatives, these chemistries are not used in wireless sensors that have to last for years so that the analysis is wrong.
Lithium thionyl chloride cells are in fact used in MILLIONS of remote, wireless devices such as AMR meters, RFID toll transponders, wireless sensors, GPS tracking devices, etc. In fact, a very large utility has AMR devices made by ACLARA (formerly Hexagram) entering their 24th year of operation on their original lithium cells.
Why invest in an expensive, unproven technology, that needs batteries anyway for back up power, when lithium batteries are proven and inexpensive?
September 19th, 2008 09:20
see http://www.tadiranbat.com for more info.