Energy Harvesting for Industrial and Building Applications (Energy Harvesting and Storage USA 2013)

We report the design, fabrication, modeling, and characterization of MEMS piezoelectric vibrational energy harvesters with low harvesting frequencies (≤ 600 Hz), high G sensitivities, and power output suitable for supporting wireless sensors and sensor networks. Powering of a wide range of devices, including LED indicator lights, reflective LCD displays, and wireless sensors and motes, has been demonstrated from a variety of vibrational sources. By harvesting vibrational energy from building exhaust and air handling equipment, we have also shown powering a wireless sensor network for monitoring building temperature. The data obtained and lessons learned from the installation will be discussed.

Kathleen Vaeth earned her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University in 1994, where she was a Kodak Fellow, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a Hertz Fellow. She is currently the Vice President of Engineering at MicroGen Systems Inc. Prior to joining MicroGen Systems, Dr. Vaeth spent 12 years at Eastman Kodak as the as a Senior Research Scientist in the Kodak Research Labs, where she worked in the areas of MEMS microfluidics, organic electronics and displays, controlled release chemistry in thin films, barrier coatings for flexible substrates, vapor deposited polymers, and piezoelectric materials and actuators, and as the Director of Future Technologies for the Functional Printing Business Unit. Her research interests spans the design, fabrication and characterization of devices, relating their performance to the materials used in their construction, and she has 20 publications and 17 issued US patents.

MicroGen Systems, Inc. is developing a suite of products based on its proprietary piezoelectric vibrational energy harvester (PZEH) technology. These low cost, long lifetime (>20 years) Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) are micro-power sources that extend rechargeable battery lifetime or will eliminate the need for batteries altogether. Applications include consumer, military, industrial and commercial industries.