Summer Project Theme

Summer = sunshine = solar/thermal/wind... often equates to mobility (scooting/skating around)... keeping/looking cool... so how about summer of Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs).

I’ve been thinking about ideas for a Summer of Green Technology. The following list includes topics that could be explored:

• Solar Power/Wind Power
• Energy Harvesting
• LED Lighting
• IoT that leads to energy savings (Smart Buildings, Smart Cities) – Ambient IOT
• Vertical Farming
• MEMS devices
• Upcycling
• Ultra low power electronic Devices

Here are some specific ideas that I thought of:

List of Content Ideas

• Upcycling Design Challenge: Several years ago, we did a Design Challenge on Upcycling. (/challenges-projects/design-challenges/upcycleit/#pifragment-1926=3 ) I thought it was well received. In that design challenge, the participants could upcycle anything. Perhaps for this design challenge, we could frame it as Upcyle Efficiency: upcycle a low efficiency thing and with a higher efficiency for power conversation.
• Energy Harvesting Roadtests: https://www.newark.com/analog-devices/adp5091-2-evalz/evaluation-kit-energy-harvesting/dp/49AK8766?st=eval-adp5091 https://www.newark.com/mikroelektronika/mikroe-3814/peltier-click-board-rohs-compliant/dp/51AH9935  www.adaptivete.com/.../
• Spotlight article: How MEMS Devices Are Energy Harvesters. Write an article based on this paragraph: “Micro-electro-mechanical Systems (MEMS) have shown significant promise in providing robust, low-cost transduction capabilities. MEMS sensors and actuators are ideally suited for small-scale energy harvesting and power generation applications where overall device dimensions are critical. Furthermore, MEMS technology can also be harnessed for large scale energy applications by augmenting these systems with sensing and actuation capabilities in order to improve energy efficiency and reduce costs.” (source: researchgate.net)
• Ebook: How IOT Saves Energy or Sustainable IOT. www.watchnetiot.com/.../ https://www.techtarget.com/iotagenda/feature/How-to-use-IoT-for-energy-efficiency-and-sustainability  https://www.digiteum.com/internet-of-things-energy-management/#:~:text=What%20does%20IoT%20energy%20management,strategy%20based%20on%20usage%20patterns. https://www.softeq.com/blog/how-iot-transforms-energy-management-key-application-areas
• Show Me Your Solar and Wind Projects – this could be a project14 or design challenge or video or unique competition. Any solar wind generation project would fit.
• Ultralow power microcontrollers – renesas, nxp, stmicroelectronics, analog devices, infineon

All of those topics on the green list sound interesting!

Green solutions (and more broadly systems that could form sub-systems of green solutions) are or could become top-of-mind for lots of engineers because people all over the world can relate to the needs for them currently.

There's been a fair amount of interest in USB-C Power Delivery with half a dozen blogs from people in the past month. USB-C PD is relevant for low-voltage solar/wind power sources and battery power.

Personally I'm interested in LED lighting a lot, but am currently just finishing a blog on it, so it would be too early to be part of a summer theme (and my project isn't green related as such, but again could form a sub-system of a green solution), but plenty of others would be interested to create projects for that topic I bet. Maybe it might give ideas to help with the summer topics, I'll publish it in a few days.

Regarding IoT for energy saving, smart thermoostats/heating control is low-hanging fruit for meaningful levels of fast cost-saving for homes, and that would be useful for many, if some of the IoT projects from people ended up involved in this area.

By coincidence I have family members in the air-con business, and they saw big demand, but only for businesses and wealthy homes (multi-$M). The average (perhaps 95% at a guess) of homes in the UK still won't have it I guess, or at best they will have the little portable units which work for one room. Those wealthy customers are also investing in heat pumps (even though there is government assistance, it likely only benefits the wealthy, who have the funds to pay for the rest of it, and have the land to use it (for say ground sourced ones I guess). 

During winter, sales of small electric heaters soared massively, because everyone was trying to cut down on energy costs, so they were probably only heating one room at a time (most homes here have central heating (water in pipes), which in theory can be shut off in some rooms, but in practice I've yet to see anyones home with fully-functioning valves : )

By coincidence I have family members in the air-con business, and they saw big demand, but only for businesses and wealthy homes (multi-$M). The average (perhaps 95% at a guess) of homes in the UK still won't have it I guess, or at best they will have the little portable units which work for one room. Those wealthy customers are also investing in heat pumps (even though there is government assistance, it likely only benefits the wealthy, who have the funds to pay for the rest of it, and have the land to use it (for say ground sourced ones I guess). 

During winter, sales of small electric heaters soared massively, because everyone was trying to cut down on energy costs, so they were probably only heating one room at a time (most homes here have central heating (water in pipes), which in theory can be shut off in some rooms, but in practice I've yet to see anyones home with fully-functioning valves : )