Perpetual harvesting device electronics

Abstract

As harvesting energy methods have been developed for perpetual powering of electronics, power management, storage control and regulation electronics need to match the voltage and current characteristics of the different harvested energy levels. Besides being able to harvest relatively small and large amounts of energy efficiently, the harvesting electronics must also consume very low power. The harvesting electronics storage and output must also match the power output demand. In our work to harvest solar and thermal energy, we have evaluated what electronics would be necessary to efficiently harvest, store and regulate these diverse energy sources. Expected energy levels from thermal harvest and from solar harvest will be discussed in relation to the harvesting electronics. Electronics to efficiently harvest thermal and solar energy at low and high energy levels will be discussed. During our development of thermal and solar energy harvesting, a demonstration vehicle was developed to further understand the needs of harvesting. We will detail the energy harvest demonstration vehicle learning and the details of the final integrated harvesting-storage-regulator structure with electronics.