Energy Harvesting Products and Forecast

This chapter presents an overview of commercially available vibration energy harvesters and attempts to compare their performance and attributes. Despite sounding trivial, such a comparison is not straightforward. There are, at present, no accepted standards for quantifying harvester output and different data is supplied by companies that can be misleading as to true device performance. The chapter describes the harvesters that are currently commercially available and the current information available for each device has been analyzed to present a consistent comparison. The majority of commercial harvesters are piezoelectric but electromagnetic devices have been included for completeness. The chapter also aims to look into the future of piezoelectric energy harvesters. It presents a brief overview and comparison of the latest devices presented in the literature and uses this analysis to identify trends in development. The fundamental limits in energy conversion efficiency will be discussed along with opportunities for materials development that will improve device performance