Batteries
The IoT is scaling but batteries are holding us back
By Larry Richenstein, founder and CEO, WePower Technologies T
he value proposition for batteries as “portable power” has made them a highly effective resource for decades, especially for use in electronic devices where wired power is not an option. While obviously convenient for legacy consumer products like television remotes and toys, batteries have also been useful in recent decades for connected endpoints like sensors and transmitters as our need for these IoT devices expands. Thanks to their size and portability, coin-cell batteries have been instrumental in the deployment of millions of sensors and transmitters into places where wired power can’t go. Batteries are far from a power panacea for the exploding wireless electronics category however, as they introduce a variety of troubling downsides for product designers, including power delivery style, replacement-related challenges, and a shocking volume of waste. Though vast “trillion sensor networks” are projected as the next step for the IoT, device designers will struggle to meet this mark unless we move away from batteries and towards a more sustainable, scalable power solution.
The explosion in small-scale wireless device production Put simply, sensors and data transmitters are everywhere. Every modern car has dozens of sensors, every home has hundreds, and every building has potentially thousands. Driven “in response to rising automobiles and machine production,” and “an inclination towards digitalization and process optimization in the private and industrial sectors”, the market for these small-scale devices has exploded in recent years to a size of $204.8 billion in 2022, per Precedence Research, with an expectation that it will grow beyond $500 billion within the next decade. Essentially, as our world’s capacity to process and act on information improves, our infrastructure for gathering and transmitting information must keep up. Right now, it can’t, and that’s because of batteries. Though their portability has long been
26 April 2023
invaluable, batteries bring a number of significant drawbacks. In order of escalating severity, those issues are about power delivery, replacement-related challenges and waste.
A clash between power supply and demand
Batteries perform best when they can provide power in long, low, continuous levels. This contrasts with how wireless devices like sensors and transmitters prefer to consume power. These devices require short spikes of power when they execute their actions but otherwise can remain mostly dormant. This clash of styles between battery power supply and device power demand means devices don’t perform as well as they could, and batteries run out far faster than expected. While typical lithium coin-cell battery lifespans are projected at
Components in Electronics
around 10 years, experts say the real-world figure is closer to two years.
Replacement-related issues Once batteries die, device owners will naturally need to replace them. That requires device designers to include user access into the device as part of their plans, as well as features to alert or remind owners when batteries need replacement. Many simple devices like sensors or transmitters forgo these features, leaving owners to remember for themselves when their batteries will die (which of course will be far sooner than they expect). This can have serious consequences.
To illustrate, consider your water leak detector if you have one (which you probably should). Often placed under sinks, washing machines, or toilets, or tucked
away in dank, dark basements, these sensors play a vital role in the health of your home or facility and are meant to inform you whenever there’s an issue. Typically powered by batteries, water leak sensors become useless when their batteries die, leaving you vulnerable to costly leaks that can lead to mould or fungi, the ruin of documents, devices, or furniture, and even the breakdown of the building’s structural integrity. Since the sensors typically transmit only when there is an alarm, the absence of an alarm is ambiguous, potentially signifying a dead battery or no leak.
Staggering waste
While failure to replace batteries in a timely manner can be viewed as an individual problem, the successful replacement
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