Energy Storage

Energy harvesting comes to the fore with electric vehicles because the price they pay for being environmental and exhibiting many performance advantages is that they have limited energy available.

Those designing electric vehicles have much in common, whether they are hybrid or pure electric, on-road, off-road, on-water, underwater or in the sky.

Contrary to popular understanding, people have been making money out of electric vehicles for over 110 years. Unfortunately there have also been bankruptcies in the electric vehicle business in most of those years. The primary difference lies in market positioning not brilliant inventions, working long hours, automation of production, matching the size of your operation to the amount of business you can realistically gain - avoiding over and under-investment - and other aspects that come to mind. Those are sometimes important but always secondary. In market positioning, the two key factors are avoiding excessive competition, including rigged markets, and making what will be wanted in the years to come.

Fuel cells were originally considered to be replacements for internal combustion engines used in traditional vehicles and replacements for traction batteries used in pure electric vehicles.

Yet it is only a first step to small devices communicating without human involvement and without those radio masts and their expensive and vulnerable cabling. Remember that...

Electronics and electrics are becoming ubiquitous, the devices appearing on and in higher and higher volume products including e-labels and e-packaging. This calls for different forms of battery, capacitor and other energy storage because priorities such as environmental credentials, thinness and compatibility with energy harvesting (eg. solar cells) come to the fore alongside life and cost.

This week the IDTechEx events Energy Harvesting & Storage and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) & RTLS took place in Denver, CO, USA. The event was attended by more than 290 attendees, with a brilliantly diverse spread of those through the value chain - from component suppliers to solution providers to many end users from different industries.

Plug in hybrid electric cars are now prioritised by most major car manufacturers. Pure electric on- road cars are prioritised by Nissan and a host of vibrant start up companies, they have one thing in common. The cleverest, most expensive part of their planned vehicles is increasingly the traction battery.

While some involved in OLEDs and OTFTs are moving out of the business of printed and potentially printed electronics, work on inorganic materials and compounds is increasing. The IDTechEx Printed Electronics Asia event in Tokyo will give a balanced view with many presentations being World firsts.

Speakers already confirmed include The US Navy SPAWAR, GE, Savi Technology, University of Michigan, Fisk University, Structural Graphics, MicroStrain, Axcess Technologies, The Facility, NREL and many others.