Energy is everywhere in the environment surrounding us — available in the form of thermal, solar, eolic and mechanical energy. However, the energy from these sources is often found with such reduced power that it cannot supply adequate power for any viable purpose. In fact, until recently, it has not been possible to capture such energy sufficiently well to perform any useful work (http://www.energyharvesting.net).

SiliconReef is currently working with R&D partners in ways to improve current technology to allow this energy to be captured, conditioned and stored in an efficient way, so that it can be later used by low consumption electronic devices.

The method chosen to improve the performance of these systems consists in forcing the transducer device (responsible for converting available environment’s energy in electrical energy) to always operate inside its higher efficiency zone. For that purpose, the company is developing a single IC which is capable of performing this operation, beyond managing the recharge cycles and the energy stored in the storage component.