Feature: Energy and sustainability


Figure 1: Energy- harvesting concept in an IIoT setting


Energy harvesting for maintenance- free IIoT


By Dunstan Power, Director, ByteSnap Design


I


ntroducing thousands of Industrial Internet of T ings (IIoT) sensors across large industrial installations can deliver valuable operational insights, but powering those devices over the long term presents a signifi cant challenge. For battery-powered sensors installed in diffi cult-to-access locations, routine battery replacement quickly becomes


expensive once labour, production downtime and specialist access equipment are taken into account. In many large-scale setups, maintenance costs can outweigh the initial savings that made the project attractive in the fi rst place. T is logistical bottleneck is why ambient energy harvesting is moving from a niche engineering curiosity to a core requirement


40 October 2026 www.electronicsworld.co.uk


for distributed sensor networks. By capturing micro-scale electricity from mechanical vibration, thermal gradients, or indoor illumination, these systems can operate sustainably for many years without routine battery replacement.


Key components in self-powered nodes T e hardware architecture of these self-powered nodes requires a highly optimised triage of components: a specialised transducer, an ultra-low-power Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC), and a target load optimised for deep-sleep states. T e harsh reality of energy harvesting is that the available power


budget is usually microscopic. If a device draws tens of milliamps during normal operation, ambient harvesting is unlikely to be viable without a substantial solar array. For example, continuously transmitting high-bandwidth data over a 5G connection would exceed the energy available from most ambient harvesting sources. T e technical sweet spot belongs to nodes that typically spend


over 99% of their operating life in deep sleep. T ey draw mere microamps in this state, and wake up via external interrupts or precise internal timers to pulse a few milliamps for a fraction of a second during transmission. Making this possible relies on adequate energy storage, since a supercapacitor or battery must accumulate power during sleep so that burst current is ready when the sensor wakes, to transmit. While Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) and cellular protocols provide


impressive wide area coverage, their peak current consumption during network negotiation can make them unviable for energy- harvesting architectures due to their peak current demands. Consequently, sub-GHz LoRaWAN, Zigbee mesh networks, or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) are the standard choices, trading payload bandwidth for transient currents that match the capabilities of low-power PMICs.


Rail project as an example A clear demonstration of this engineering balance is found in a trackside deployment, engineered by ByteSnap Design for the


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