Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) has introduced its next generation of power management integrated circuits (ICs) for energy harvesting. The highly efficient boost charger for nano (ultra low) power energy harvesting manages the microwatts to milliwatts of power generated from a number of sources, such as solar, thermoelectric, electromagnetic and vibration, and stores the extracted energy in various storage elements, including Li-Ion batteries and super capacitors. The bq25504 also includes circuitry to protect the energy storage element from over voltage and under voltage conditions and to kick-start the system when the battery is deeply discharged.
In a solar panel powering a handheld device that is operating in indoor light conditions, for example, the new boost charger increases the usable harvested energy by 30 to 70 percent compared to a linear regulator. This efficiency allows designers to reduce the size and the number of solar panels in their designs, thus reducing overall solution cost. The device can benefit wireless sensor networks (WSN) for area, industrial, water/waste and structural monitoring, along with consumer, high reliability and medical applications.
