« Back to NewsNIA WINS TOP AWARD FOR REVOLUTIONARY ENERGY HARVESTING DEVICE

Hampton, Va. –­ The National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) has been awarded top honors for making the most significant technical achievement in energy harvesting over the past 18 months. The recognition was announced during a special awards ceremony on November 15 at the Energy Harvesting & Storage USA 2011 conference in Boston, Massachusetts.

Progress by researchers at NIA, NASA Langley Research Center and other partners on a device called the HYPEHT, which stands for “hybrid piezoelectric energy harvesting transducer,” was cited as the impetus for the award of “Best Technical Development of an Energy Harvesting Device” to NIA during the ceremony.

Energy Harvesting is the process of capturing ambient energy from naturally-occurring energy sources, such as thermal, light (solar), wind and mechanical energy, accumulating that energy either for directly powering portable devices or storing it for later use. Also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging, energy harvesting is projected to become a multibillion dollar industry. Developments such as the HYPEHT will pave the way to long life, maintenance free devices at a reduced cost.

HYPEHT was developed with support from NASA Langley Research Center’s “Designer Extreme Materials Revolutionary Technical Challenge.” The device uses a unique approach to couple more mechanical energy, produce more electrical charge, and yield greatly enhanced energy conversion efficiency compared to other methods. For instance, the HYPEHT yields 19 times more electrical energy output than an equivalent “31”-mode flextensional transducer and 100 -1000 times more than an analogous bimorph or sandwich piezoelectric beam. The HYPEHT also achieves 26% mechanical to electrical energy conversion efficiency - five times greater than that of the state-of-the-art piezoelectric transducers.

“This honor validates the efforts of our multidisciplinary research team in the past several years to lead piezoelectric energy harvesting research in this direction,” said lead inventor and technology developer Dr. Tian-Bing Xu, who is a Senior Research Scientist at NIA. He added, “This win belongs to all of our research team members whose collaboration made these technology advancements possible. It encourages us to continue address the complex and challenging issues of piezoelectric energy harvesting as we seek additional partners for research collaboration and to help bring this technology to the market quickly.”

Other HYPEHT project team members include Mia Siochi and Ji Su at NASA Langley Research Center; Professor Xiaoning Jiang at North Carolina State University; Professor Lei Zuo and his student Wanlu Zhou at Stony Brook University; and Drs. Paul Rehrig and Wes Hackenberger at TRS Technologies.

Three eminent academics judged the entries: Prof. Michael C. McAlpine from Princeton University, Mr. Peter Spies from Fraunhofer IIS and Dr. Peter Fuhr from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The Energy Harvesting & Storage USA 2011 conference was co-located with the annual IDTechEx Wireless Sensor Networks & RTLS event and was attended by over 360 industry professionals from 16 countries and featured 40 exhibitors.