Micro-energy harvesting pioneer secures prestigious European Commission funding

Trameto’s HarvestAll® silicon chip technology will enable battery-free IoT infrastructure

Chepstow, UK, 23 August 2018: Trameto, the power management technology company focused on micro-energy harvesting, has become one of fewer than 5% of recent applicants for the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funding programme, to be awarded Phase 1 grant funding. It is also the only one in Wales. The €70,000 project will accelerate development of Trameto’s HarvestAll® power management integrated circuits (PMICs) to make energy harvesting viable in a multitude of new applications. Their functionality is not currently available anywhere else.

Horizon 2020 is the largest European Union Research and Innovation programme ever created. Nearly €80 billion of funding has been made available for the period 2014 to 2020, and private investment is being added to this. The so-called SME Instrument, the fund from which Trameto has been allocated this award, has an expected budget of €479 million for 2018, €48 million of which was allocated to Phase 1. The Horizon 2020 programme targets organisations that can demonstrate world-class science and the potential to achieve industrial leadership with technologies that benefit society through creating a more sustainable future.

Commenting on the award, Trameto’s CEO, Huw Davies, said: “From the outset, Trameto has had the clear goal of creating a technology that solves a real-world challenge. As many industry commentators have noted, the benefits of the internet of things (IoT) will not be realised until its dependency on battery power is removed. That’s what we’ve set out to achieve, we’re on track and it’s a great honour that the European Commission has chosen us to be part of a select group of innovators that will benefit from this programme’s funding. It will help us further strengthen our already substantial market understanding, formalise existing and build new relationships with partners across the energy harvesting ecosystem, along with developing our supply chain and routes to market. This project will take us an important step closer to having an exploitable technology that will achieve a high return on investment through sales of our novel power management chip into the 20 billion IoT nodes that Gartner forecasts will be in operation by 2020.”

A single HarvestAll device can take inputs from any source of ambient energy, many instances of the same source, or multiple different sources such as light, movement and thermal gradient. This energy will power “self-sustaining” smart sensor devices found at the edge of communications networks in applications such as the industrial IoT, infrastructure monitoring, asset tracking, smart buildings, agriculture, and home automation systems. In some instances, the devices will enhance battery life by creating an additional energy source so that replacement batteries are never needed. In other applications, using the PMICs will eliminate the need for batteries altogether. HarvestAll® technology will make IoT devices more attractive to customers, cut energy costs and reduce battery waste, a key consideration in meeting the environmental goals of many organisation.

Trameto’s HarvestAll® technology and the award of this grant will help companies build resilient infrastructure, promote exclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation. It will also contribute to making cities and other human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. With these ambitions, it contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.