From Everactive to Nowi, a new generation of startups could lessen battery use for a variety of IoT sensors and other devices.

There is growing number of new companies that aim to extract small amounts of energy from environmental sources. This generation of energy harvesting startups is largely focused on delivering power for the plethora of IoT sensors around today,

The vision of wireless energy is not a new concept — it’s just orders of magnitude less ambitious about the amounts of power involved. The idea of transmitting electrical power through the air originated with the famed and troubled inventor Nikola Tesla way back in the late 1890s.

Tesla was interested in transmitting electric power over distance through the air. The inventor’s early experiments in Colorado Springs in 1899 involved a Magnifying Transmitter, a 52-foot diameter electrical coil that sent 130-foot lightning arcs into the air.

10/17-19 EAC