Given the hungry power needs of the rapidly expanding realm of the Internet of Things, clever solutions are needed to generate and conserve energy consumed by these devices.
One such solution is Dracula. No, not the blood-sucking Transylvanian count, the ambient indoor light-sucking technology.
While indoor IoT devices have historically relied on battery power to function, one developer is turning to ambient energy harvesting as a sustainable and cost-effective alternative. French company Dracula Technologies recently secured $5.8M in funding to build out its LAYER technology, an indoor energy harvesting solution.
After collaborating with the French public research organization CEA, Dracula Technologies was founded in 2011. Dracula’s Light As Your Energetic Response (LAYER) technology then underwent six more years of rigorous research and development before it was launched through Hello Tomorrow, a program for deep tech startups.
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Dracula Technology claims, however, that it has found a way to harness enough indoor light to power some IoT devices. LAYER is Dracula’s proprietary organic photovoltaic technology designed to harness electricity from ambient light with intensities from 5 to 1,000 lux. From these indoor light intensities, a single 64 mm x 69 mm LAYER cell can produce 3 V, 210 µA, and 609 µW.
Read more here. See the Dracula Technologies website here.
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