Nexperia Announces Energy Balance Calculator to Extend Battery Life
Engineers can now easily visualize what is consumed and what is harvested in an energy-harvesting system that uses Nexperia solutions.
Nexperia has designed an Energy Balance Calculator to optimize energy-harvesting solutions and enhance the lifespan of batteries. While enhancing battery life is the ultimate goal of any design team, it can be a nebulous task, requiring detailed research, advanced system modeling, and innovative energy-harvesting solutions.
Nexperia's Energy Balance Calculator.
The new calculator employs Nexperia's energy-harvesting PMICs based on a maximum power point tracking algorithm. This algorithm factors in real-world technical parameters and calculates the energy the load receives and the energy compensation. This can help engineers visualize an efficiency curve to evaluate their system's precision and efficiency.
Power Management to Optimize Batteries
Nexperia's web-based Energy Balance Calculator is designed to estimate the amount of light energy that can be harvested, factoring in variables such as light intensity, cell size, and chip efficiency. Users can either select from pre-loaded cases, such as a TV remote control or IoT sensor device, or input custom values for a specific use case.
Users can then choose which Nexperia energy-harvesting PMIC they will design with and the power consumption of their intended application. The system outputs results, including expected energy harvested per day, the battery lifetime extension of the system, and the expected system efficiency.
Efficiency curve of the NEH2000 PMIC.
The calculator is designed to help engineers choose the appropriate energy-harvesting PMIC for their application and more easily design and predict the behavior of their systems. With the Energy Balance Calculator, Nexperia intends to empower engineers to make informed decisions to better use energy-harvesting solutions and prolong the lifespan of electronic devices.
The Need for Energy Harvesting
Energy-harvesting technology enables devices to capture and convert ambient energy sources—such as solar, thermal, kinetic, and radio-frequency energy—into usable electrical power in real time. This direct conversion process allows devices to operate autonomously, reducing or entirely eliminating the dependency on traditional batteries or external power supplies.
By tapping into readily available ambient energy, devices can achieve a self-sustaining power cycle, mitigating the environmental impact of battery production and disposal. However, the technology is not without its challenges. The variability and often low density of ambient energy sources require sophisticated conversion and management circuits to ensure consistent device operation. Moreover, the initial cost and complexity of integrating energy-harvesting systems can be prohibitive for certain applications.
Ongoing research and development are progressively overcoming these barriers, paving the way for devices to harness their power directly from their environment and create more sustainable and autonomous electronic ecosystems. Nexperia's Energy Balance Calculator is one tool in the toolbelt of low-power design engineers to meet these challenges.
All images used courtesy of Nexperia.
