Towards perpetual sensors: improved sustainability of battery-less IoT devices and photovoltaic power sub-systems through implementation of circular economy compatible designs and business models

Lightricity是一家专注于环境影响的公司，旨在消除物联网许多应用中对电池扩散的需求，这些应用可能会增加数十亿到数万亿电池的环境浪费，以及电池更换活动的巨大成本和碳足迹。这些可扩展性挑战正在降低物联网的潜在优势。我们利用获得专利的室内光伏技术解决了电池问题，该技术的效率比竞争对手的技术高6倍，并且拥有专有的电源管理架构，使完全无电池的设备和产品外形在以前不可能的光照水平下工作。物联网的许多应用，包括为企业提供可持续发展和循环经济方法，都可以通过我们的电池挑战解决方案来实现。然而，在这样做的过程中，我们仍然推动了大量电子设备的部署；尽管它们比电池供电的同类产品更可持续。为了进一步优化可持续性，我们将审查现有产品的BOM，以评估可持续性和潜在的退化/故障机制（确定第一个故障点），并通过探索在电源块和整体设备层面进行技术创新的可行性来提高可持续性。引入循环经济选项，延长设备寿命、重复使用、回收和维修/升级，将包括模块化设计考虑，通过方便拆卸组件和子系统来平衡成本、实用性和效益。此外，显著的小型化可以降低包装，各种稀有金属的使用和其他成分的含量。小型化也使整体跟踪设备足够小，可以更广泛地应用于包装/商品，从摇篮到坟墓，在我们的客户循环经济优化产品生命周期本身。为了客户的便利和价值，我们还将研究利用和促进可重用组件/子系统的循环经济商业模式选项。

Lightricity is an environmental impact focused company, aiming to eliminate the need for battery proliferation in many applications of IoT which threaten to add billions to trillions of batteries to environmental waste and huge cost and carbon footprint of battery-change activity. These scalability challenges are reducing the potential benefits of IoT. We address the battery challenge with our patented indoor-photovoltaic technology that is up to 6x more efficient than competing technologies and proprietary power management architectures that enable entirely battery-free devices and product form factors that work at light levels not previously possible. There are many applications of IoT, including for delivering sustainability and circular economy approaches for business, that can be enabled by our solution to the battery challenge. However, in doing so we still drive deployment of large numbers of electronic devices; albeit ones much more sustainable than battery-powered equivalents.To further optimise sustainability, we will review our existing products' BOM for assessment of sustainability and potential degradations/failure mechanisms (identifying first points of failure) and improve sustainability by exploring the feasibility of innovating technically at the power block and overall device level. Introducing circular economy options for extended device longevity, reuse, recycle and repair/upgrade will include modular design considerations that balance cost, practicality and benefit by enabling easy removal of components and subsystems. Additionally, significant miniaturisation could drive lower packaging, various scarce metals usage and other component content. Miniaturisation also makes overall tracking devices small enough for wider application on packaging/goods from cradle to grave in our customers circular economy optimised product lifecycles themselves. For customer convenience and value we will also investigate circular economy business model options that leverage and promote reusable components/subsystems.