EnABLES Newsletter Issue 1 – March 2019

Highlights
Our first EnABLES Newsletter
Free-of-charge access to expertise on energy harvesting, storage and micro-power management
Successful summer school in Perugia attended by 27 people
Meet us at APEC2019, one of the events where EnABLES will be present
1st EnABLES Newsletter – March 2019
Welcome to our first EnABLES Newsletter. EnABLES started in 2018 and is a €5.2M EU research infrastructure project with the mission to create ‘self-sustaining’ energy solutions to ‘power the internet of things‘ based on energy harvesting, storage, micro-power management and system integration activities. In this first newsletter we start with a high level overview of EnABLES followed by some achievements and insights into ongoing and upcoming activities.
Eleven world leading research centres and Universities in Europe are part of this initiative and our access centres are available – via the Transnational Access program (TA) – for free-of-charge expertise on energy harvesting, storage and micro-power management to do feasibility studies:
- Access centres:
- Tyndall National Institute (co-ordinator), Fraunhofer (IMS & IIS), CEA (Leti & Liten), IMEC The Netherlands
- Virtual Access:
- University of Perugia, University of Southampton
- Knowledge hubs:
- KIT, University of Bologna, Politecnico di Torino

What are our power related challenges?
- Industry challenge:
- The world will have 1 trillion IoT devices by 2025 all needing a power source. We need to eliminate the need for battery replacement where possible by developing energy harvesting solutions and/or finding ways to reduce the power consumption of devices.
- Research excellence challenge:
- Get academic and industry developers of energy harvesting components and systems as well as IoT devices to work together to collaboratively develop application orientated solutions.
The newsletter will be sent approximately every three months. The objectives of the newsletter are to disseminate and highlight EnABLES expertise and achievements, show progress of ongoing and completed EnABLES activities, and announce ‘Power IoT’ related events. In this newsletter, we outline the expertise available within our research centres and universities and promote the TA program. Feel free to visit the EnABLES website and/or to contact us for further information.


Free-of-charge access to power-related expertise
EnABLES provides fully funded access to key European research infrastructures (RIs) in powering the Internet of Things (IoT). Industrial and academic researchers & integrators can now address the key challenges required to enable truly ‘invisible’, unobtrusive and self-powered (autonomous) wireless devices by having access to state-of-the art facilities and expertise at the EnABLES partner sites. This collaborative approach will help bridge the gap between capturing ‘ambient’ energy supply from energy harvesting sources (EH), integrating new devices for energy storage (ES) and developing micro-power management (MPM) solutions for miniaturised system operation.
Objectives
- Create a “powering the IoT” community with a mind-set change in how parts and systems are developed based on rapid access to advanced research infrastructure
- Enable development of wireless IoT devices and miniaturized, autonomous sensors
- Develop and integrate energy harvesting and energy storage solutions
- Develop energy management solutions within self-powered smart sensor systems
Benefits for Participants or Members
- Free of charge rapid access to undertake feasibility studies at EnABLES partner sites
- Access to standardised and inter-operable libraries
- Being part of a strong network to form collaborations
- Availability of expert technical advice and support (lab, equipment, tools and libraries)
- Opportunity to use state-of-the-art tools to optimize system level performance
Some achievements to date
Following from our website launch in Aug 2018 our most notable achievement is setting up the TA programme so users can now access the key infrastructure on offer. Details on how the process works can be found on our Website. To date, over 180 people have signed up to our newsletter, we have processed over 25 transnational access enquiries, presented at over 12 international events and we believe we have already established significant foothold in developing a ‘power IoT ecosystem’ with EnABLES at its centre.
Of the 25 enquiries, 8 of them have been approved and 10 are being processed. Several approved enquiries already started and we expect the first completed projects within a few months. The process is quick and simple and we have experts on hand to help.
A typical TA program is 20 working days effort done by an EnABLES partners at no cost to you! It can also cover costs related to one of your team going to the access site to participate if so desired.

EnABLES consortium at the January meeting in Tyndall National Institute, Cork (Ireland)
Anyone who logs onto our website is encouraged to ‘sign up’ as a free member of the EnABLES network to receive newsletters, updates on major events, insights on the technologies being developed and examples of successful use cases funded by EnABLES. We encourage members to give us feedback and direction of how to maximise out outputs in accordance with needs and trends.
Successful summer school in Perugia
The first Summer school of the EnABLES project, entitled “Powering the Internet of Things”, has taken place in Perugia, Italy, from July 17th to July 20th 2018.
The main topics of the School were Energy Harvesting (linear and non-linear vibration, thermal, RF), Energy Storage (new materials and new technologies), Micro-power Management, System integration.
In 2018 the School was attended by 27 people including 14 students (graduate students, post-docs, young researchers and scientists) and 13 teachers from prestigious institutes of Europe (Univ. Of Southampton, Bologna and Perugia, Fraunhofer Inst., CEA, Helmholtz Institute of Münster, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie). On the second day, a poster session has been organized: many students had the opportunity to show their research. After the poster session all the students and the teachers left the rooms of the school for a one afternoon excursion to the Trasimeno lake. There they explored the beautiful Polvese island and enjoyed a typical Italian seafood and fish dinner.


EnABLES Summer School 2019
In 2019 the EnABLES Summer School will take place again in Perugia – a beautiful medieval and historical town in the centre of Italy – from Sept 3th to Sept 6th, a new poster session and an excursion to the ancient village of Assisi are planned. The school is open to graduate and PhD students as well to young researchers and those who want to learn more about ‘Power IoT’ technologies that complement their own expertise. Mark your diary for this event, details will follow in the next newsletter and on the EnABLES website!
For applications & further information please email to school AT nipslab.org


Upcoming events
EnABLES has created a calendar of events that it has targeted for dissemination. Check out our list of forthcoming events on our website http://www.enables-project.eu/events/list/
In the coming weeks the following events are planned. People from EnABLES will be present on these events. Feel free to contact them for your questions and to know more from EnABLES.
17-21 March 2019: APEC 2019 – Anaheim USA
Energy harvesting industry session at APEC 2019
EnABLES co-ordinator Mike Hayes will co-chair (with Brian Zahnstecher, PowerRox USA) the PSMA energy harvesting industry session at APEC2019 in Anaheim, CA on 20th March.
APEC is the world’s largest annual power electronics industry conference attracting in excess of 5,000 participants and organised by industry association PSMA and IEEE PELS (power electronics society).
- 25-29 March 2019: DATE 2019 in Florence (Italy)
- 1-5 April 2019: Hannover Fair in Hannover (Germany)
- 10-11 April 2019: Smart Systems Integration 2019 (SSI2019) in Barcelona (Spain)
Topics for future newsletters
This newsletter is for your benefit – we are open to suggestions, what would you like to hear about? At present we are thinking about:
- Success stories – examples of funded TAs
- Individual spotlight on partners, e.g. technology offerings, key personnel
- An introduction to our JRA activities.
Don’t hesitate to contact us – either via our website or simply by replying to this newsletter – to share your suggestions and feedback. Thanks in advance.
The EnABLES consortium consists of the following access centres and knowledge hubs. Feel free to contact them with your questions.
- Access Centres
-
- Tyndall National Institute, Ireland
- Commisariat a L’energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA-Leti, CEA-Liten), France
- Fraunhofer IIS, Fraunhofer IMS, Germany
- IMEC Nederland, Netherlands
- Knowledge Hubs
-
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
- Politecnico di Torino, Italy
- Alma Mater Studiorum – Universita di Bologna, Italy
- Universita degli Studi di Perugia, Italy
- University of Southampton, UK
HOW DO I APPLY FOR ACCESS?
A very simple on-line service for applying for Transnational Access (TA) is available through the EnABLES website. Libraries of parts based on metrology and/or simulation files will also be available.