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Country of origin: Spain

Summary

A Catalan research group has developed a technology to efficiently power sensors or mobile devices with energy harvested from the environment by a transducer (e.g. a solar cell or a thermogenerator) equipped with a novel Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) method. This has a lower cost, less complexity and consumes less energy than current methods and is especially suitable for low power (<1 W) energy transducers. They are seeking license or commercial agreements with technical assistance.

Full description

Low power devices mainly use either primary or secondary (rechargeable) batteries. Primary batteries are cheaper and are suitable if they last during the life time of the device. Secondary batteries, however, are used in mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones) that need to be recharged repeatedly from the mains. However, this solution is not convenient for remote sensors or whenever the power network is not available or easily accessible. Energy harvesting, and particularly, solar cells or photovoltaic (PV) panels, become the most feasible alternatives for these cases. In order to obtain the maximum power from photovoltaic (PV) panels, several MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) methods have been developed and are currently used on high-power systems. However, their application in low-power PV panels (< 1 W) is still emerging and represents a new challenge in order to achieve an improvement on the net power gain out of this kind of systems.

A Catalan research group offers a new patented MPPT method that is especially suitable for these low-power sources of energy and presents significant advantages over other existing methods, such as low cost, low complexity and better performance. It does not require complex operations and can be implemented with low power electronic components.

Two different MPPT controller implementations are possible: analog and digital. For the analog, a circuit control has been generated by using off-the-shelf electronic components. Its power consumption is lower than 350 µW with a tracking efficiency over 99.6 %. The overall power efficiency from the PV panel to the storage unit is higher than 92 % (including the efficiency of the dc-dc converter) for an input power higher than 100 mW.

As for the digital implementation, it is based on the use of any microcontroller already available in the system or device to be powered. This reduces additional expenses and the complexity of the control circuit. For a PV panel power as low as 10 mW, this type of MPPT controller achieves a tracking efficiency over 99.5 % with a power consumption below 100 µW. Thus, the overall efficiency reaches over a 90 %.

Both implementations have been already tested with sub-watt solar panels at different conditions and showed better performance compared to current direct-coupled solutions.

Innovative Aspects

The technology offered turns into a new MPPT method for its use in low-power solar cells, (PV panels) and other types of energy transducers such as thermogenerators.

Current MPPT methods and circuits are only effective for PV panels over 50 W. The MPPT technology offered presents low complexity, low cost and less power consumption, being suitable for PV panel powers as low as 10 mW with an overall efficiency as high as 90 %.

Through this technology, the use of microprocessor-based implementations are also feasible, thus reducing the number of components used, the circuit-complexity and, as a consequence, the costs. This technology has been already tested with solar cells but it is also potentially applicable in other energy transducers such as thermogenerators in thermal energy harvesters.

Partner expertise sought:

- Type of partner sought: industry and technology centres.

- Specific area of activity of the partner: electronics, energy storage, photovoltaic and solar energy.

- Task to be performed by the partner sought: test new applications and adaption of the technology to specific needs. Commercialization and exploitation of the technology.

Listed under: Electronics \ Information Processing & Systems \ Energy Topics \ Measurement, Testing & Standards \ Renewable Energy \ Internet and Wireless Technologies (Wireless, WiFi, Bluetooth)

 

Key dates Profile created on: 23 July 2010 Closing date: 16 July 2011

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