en.Wedoany.com Reported - Belgian semiconductor company e-peas is accelerating the development of ambient energy harvesting power management chips, planning to build on its existing products to create new power management integrated circuits, expanding their application in consumer electronics, industrial equipment, smart buildings, and environmental IoT terminals. The technology focuses on solving the long-term power supply issue for connected devices, enabling sensors and electronic terminals to operate using weak energy from the surrounding environment, reducing reliance on disposable batteries.
The power management integrated circuits developed by e-peas harvest energy from indoor and outdoor light, radio frequency signals, device vibrations, and temperature gradients, converting, storing, and distributing the collected weak electrical energy. Due to differences in output power and stability among various ambient energy sources, the chips must start and operate continuously under low-voltage and low-current conditions while controlling their own power consumption to prevent the harvested energy from being excessively consumed by the power management stage.
These chips are typically deployed inside sensors, remote controls, tracking terminals, and monitoring devices. When usable light, heat, vibration, or wireless RF signals are present around the device, the energy harvesting module converts them into electrical energy, and the power management chip then powers the sensing, computing, storage, and wireless communication modules based on the terminal's operating status. For devices that cannot completely eliminate batteries, this technology can also extend battery replacement cycles by supplementing energy and reducing standby losses.
Currently, e-peas' power management chips are used in solar-powered remote controls, HVAC systems, surveillance cameras, and asset tracking devices. In solar remote controls, the chips harvest energy from indoor light; in HVAC and building sensing systems, they support long-term operation of temperature, humidity, and equipment status monitoring nodes; in asset tracking devices, they must coordinate positioning, data processing, and wireless signal transmission under extremely low power consumption.
As the number of IoT terminals increases, although the battery capacity of individual devices is small, large-scale deployment leads to ongoing maintenance work for battery installation, inspection, and replacement. Especially in scenarios such as high places, enclosed spaces, inside industrial equipment, or dispersed deployments, maintenance personnel often find it difficult to access terminals frequently. Through ambient energy harvesting and ultra-low-power design, devices can reduce on-site maintenance frequency and lower the risk of data interruption caused by battery depletion.
In its next phase, e-peas will expand its existing energy harvesting power management solutions, developing new products suitable for more energy sources, terminal structures, and power consumption levels. Engineering focus areas will include improving weak energy conversion efficiency, optimizing chip static power consumption, enhancing multi-source energy management capabilities, and making chips easier to integrate with sensors, wireless communication modules, and energy storage components.
The new products will also target batch application needs in consumer electronics, industrial IoT, and smart building devices. For original equipment manufacturers, energy harvesting chips must not only meet low-power indicators under laboratory conditions but also adapt to different light, temperature, vibration, and RF environments, maintaining stable operation throughout the product's entire lifecycle. By expanding its product portfolio and commercialization support, e-peas aims to drive battery-free and long-life electronic systems from single applications to larger-scale environmental IoT deployments.
