Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD
By the time you read this, we’ll either be right on the verge – or in the immediate aftermath – of The Battery Show, which is quickly becoming not just a critical show for energy storage, but one of the most important automotive events of the year.
2024’s gala will be held October 7-10, at the Huntington Place in downtown Detroit, with an expected attendance of nearly 20K (including representatives from PSD) and over 1,000 exhibitors returning to the Motor City for the annual showcase on (primarily) electric vehicles and the batteries powering them.
As you’re checking out the latest and greatest in EVs and energy storage, hopefully you’ll run into the crew from Power Systems Design!
And as Detroit highlights the increasingly high-tech automobile, our October issue covers what’s, among other things, the support system for EVs – namely, the IoT + Smart Cities.
The market is certainly growing at an exponential rate – according to Mordor Intelligence, the Internet of Things will be worth an estimated 2.37 trillion (yes, trillion) by 2029, which is none-too-surprising when you realize both the IoT and the idea of the smart city have direct or tangential relation to pretty much every corner of the industry.
And I’d like to highlight a piece which touches on one of the more interesting power applications – wireless charging.
“Wirelessly Charging the IoT”, by Yaser Abuzarifa, Fabrizio Caramaschi, and Igor Spinella, with Eggtronic, discusses how wireless charging has become an indispensable lifeline for the millions of low-power, portable devices that constitute the Internet of Things.
While wireless charging has primarily served smart phone applications, as the authors point out, it could also serve earphones, hand controllers for gaming, wearables (smart watches, smart glasses), and other small devices (up to 6W). This includes connected medical devices and health monitors such as pacemakers, orthopaedic implants, insulin pumps, smart plasters, and glucose monitors.
“Wireless charging can benefit a range of gaming, smart-home, smart-agriculture and smart-city IoT systems where the feasibility of a direct wired connection is low and/or replacements are not desirable,” say the authors.
The authors also discuss some of the endemic problems with wireless charging, like the fact that it’s often bulky and expensive and that it requires a large, thick coil which must be planar.
But as they mention, “It is, however, possible to simplify this design to create a more efficient wireless charger specifically for the needs of IoT and similar low-power systems.”
They note how to reduce the component count by eliminating certain parts, with the end result being a streamlined system (like the WaveEgg LP wireless charger developed by Eggtronic).
Enjoy the October issue!
Best Regards,
Jason Lomberg
North American Editor, PSD
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