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NewswireTODAY - /newswire/ -
Montréal, Québec, Canada, 2009/03/24 - It appears that the numerous opportunities for energy harvesting devices must be analyzed carefully, taking into account all aspects of the final application from power consumption profiles to lifetime and size constraints.
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Electronics.ca Publications, the electronics industry market research and knowledge network, announces the availability of a new report entitled "MEMS Energy Harvesting Devices, Technologies and Markets".
Market driver analysis for challenges that go beyond energy density
Special attention has been given to the market drivers for adopting MEMS energy harvesting devices in different market segments, factoring the progress of competing technologies and cost constraints.
It appears that the numerous opportunities for energy harvesting devices must be analyzed carefully, taking into account all aspects of the final application from power consumption profiles to lifetime and size constraints. Applications screened cover automotive, medical, industrial machine monitoring and process control, home automation and defense.
The main developments in MEMS energy harvesting devices are described and compared to fuel cells and micro-batteries. The report also describes the challenges facing the current players and the current market trends and business models.
Main Challenges:
Within an environmentally conscious world, MEMS Energy harvesting devices promise in principle a cleaner and almost perpetual solution to powering small systems avoiding the use and waste of polluting batteries.
Ever optimistic market projections are predicting billions of dollars in revenue for ubiquitous sensor networks in the next five to ten years and derive from these numbers large energy harvesting sales and volumes.
And indeed, MEMS energy harvesting devices have been a hot topic in MEMS R&D for some years with spectacular developments driven by DARPA programs within the Hi-MEMS cyborg insects.
The reality is that beyond the technological buzz, commercial applications are slowly starting to get to market for industrial applications and home automation appliances. This is driving the first volumes for energy harvesting applications, but not necessarily at the micro scale. Hot market segments in 2007 and 2008 such as tire pressure monitoring systems where batteries are currently the dominant solution have driven enormous efforts but the market dynamics have not made it possible to accept a premium price for alternative solutions.
The efforts put in this report into is a fine analysis of the market drivers for using MEMS energy harvesting devices, in comparison to micro batteries, micro fuel cells, or even solar cells. Different application fields from medical to home automation, industrial process control, machine monitoring or transportations have been analyzed in this report.
The challenges facing this technology were examined in a broad view, from a technology but also from a whole product point of view. There are needs for better power density but also for less power consuming electronics and wireless communications.
Report Highlights:
- 21 applications evaluated;
- Global overview across 7 fields: automotive, industrial, building & home automation, environment monitoring, military & aerospace, medical, consumer electronics;
- 14 company profiles;
- 180+ slides;
- Analysis of piezoelectric, capacitive, electromagnetic vibration energy harvesting and thin film thermal energy harvesting;
- Review of the latest developments in energy storage devices (microbatteries…), wireless communication technologies and wireless sensor networks.
Details of the new report, table of contents and ordering information can be found on Electronics.ca Publications' website.
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