Energy Harvesting Technology
Solar Energy Harvesting
Environmental energy harvesting, in particular solar based, has emerged as a viable technique to supplement battery supplies. Solar energy harvesting through photo-voltaic conversion provides the highest power density of any energy harvesting module. This makes solar energy harvesting the method of choice to power an embedded system that consumes several mW using a reasonably small harvesting module. Solar energy harvesting components, such as solar panels, and energy storage elements, such as batteries or ultracapacitors, have different voltage-current characteristics, which must be matched to each other as well as the energy requirements of the system to maximize harvesting efficiency.
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| Featured Solar Energy Harvesting Product |
Texas Instruments Solar Energy Harvesting Development Tool: eZ430-RF2500-SEH
The Texas Instruments eZ430-RF2500-SEH Solar Energy Harvesting Development Tool helps designers create a perpetually powered wireless sensor network based on the ultra-low-power MSP430™ microcontroller (MCU). The eZ430-RF2500-SEH Solar Energy Harvesting kit includes a module with a high efficiency solar
panel optimized for operating indoors under low-intensity fluorescent
lights that provide enough power to run a wireless sensor application
with no additional batteries. This TI development kit also has inputs for external energy harvesters and stores additional energy in a pair of thin-film rechargeable EnerChips. The eZ430-RF2500 is used to run the energy harvesting application and is a complete USB-based MSP430 wireless development tool. The TI kit includes a debugging interface that allows for real-time, in-system debugging and programming for the MSP430 and is also the interface to transfer data to a PC from a wireless system.
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 Olimex MSP430-SolarOlimex MSP430-Solar Solar Panel battery Charger with MSP430 JTAG connector. This Solar Panel development kit is compatible with TIs MSP430 Ultra-Low Power Microcontrollers.
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 Parallax Solar PanelsParallax offers a variety of solar panels from 2.5 Watt individual solar panels to 30 Watt Solar Panel Kits.
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Patient Remote Health Monitoring Example using Solar Energy
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| Solar Energy Harvesting Resources |
| Technical Papers / White Papers
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