Jun 4 2008
mPhase/AlwaysReady Inc., a leading cutting-edge battery technology development company, today announced that it anticipates entering the emerging energy harvesting industry with its revolutionary Smart NanoBattery.
The rapidly emerging field of energy harvesting represents an additional arena of potential applications for the Smart NanoBattery. The field generally refers to the process of capturing and storing energy. It encompasses a variety of sources such as solar, wind, thermal, or kinetic energy. The development of alternative energy sources is today an area of increasing interest, research, and funding. It is within this context that the Smart NanoBattery offers significant potential. It could be used, for example, to provide supplemental power to energy harvesting solar or piezoelectric devices when they are not able to provide energy.
According mPhase CEO Ron Durando, "Energy harvesting devices such as solar cells depend on external occurrences such as a sunny day, so they are not always available when power is needed. Because the Smart NanoBattery offers Power on Command(TM), it provides a convenient integrated power solution, where multiple power sources can work together, building on each of their technical strengths."
Energy harvesting, energy storage and advanced power management are some of the major issues in terms of the commercial rollout of next-generation low-power electronic devices and systems. Low-power devices are being developed for wireless as well as wired systems such as mesh networks, sensor and control systems, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), radio frequency identification (RFID) devices, and so on. Applications include building/ industrial automation, medical, homeland security, military, commercial, gaming, and others. According to LUX Research, energy storage is a $41 Billion market. With potential markets spanning billion-unit industries, energy harvesting could be "the next big thing" in power.