Renewable energy rain or sunshine - harvesting droplet kinetic energy on transparent thin films

The grand vision of "Internet of Things" (IoT) behind a sustainable smart world requires billions of sensor nodes. This brings the urgency of developing self-powered devices with energy harvesting mechanisms that are sustainable, maintenance free, and with long lifetimes. However, there is still a lack of desired "all-rounder" 24/7 energy harvesting solution, efficient at mixed ambient conditions - raining or sunshine, day and night.

The proposed method is to integrate transparent thin film (reported recently in journal Nature, page392, 2020) rain-drop energy harvesting technologies, making it possible to be integrated with solar energy harvesters to continuously power next generation sensor nodes rain or sunshine.

In addition, thermal energy recovery (reported in Energy Sustainability in Built and Urban Environments, pp255, 2019) will also be investigated, to potentially power the device, or facilitate freshwater production from the water collected during raining.

The core research will focus on creating and characterising electro-mechanical device configurations and thin-film material properties to improve overall energy harvesting efficiently.

ReNU's enhanced doctoral training programme delivered by three uniquely co-located major UK universities, Northumbria (UNN), Durham (DU) and Newcastle (NU), addresses clear skills needs in small-to-medium scale renewable energy (RE) and sustainable distributed energy (DE). It was co-designed by a range of companies and is supported by a balanced portfolio of 27 industrial partners (e.g. Airbus, Siemens and Shell) of which 12 are small or medium size enterprises (SMEs) (e.g. Enocell, Equiwatt and Power Roll). A further 9 partners include Government, not-for-profit and key network organisations. Together these provide a powerful, direct and integrated pathway to a range of impacts that span whole energy systems.

Industrial partners will interact with ReNU in three main ways: (1) through the Strategic Advisory Board; (2) by providing external input to individual doctoral candidate's projects; and (3) by setting Industrial Challenge Mini-Projects. These interactions will directly benefit companies by enabling them to focus ReNU's training programme on particular needs, allowing transfer of best practice in training and state-of-the-art techniques, solution approaches to R&D challenges and generation of intellectual property. Access to ReNU for new industrial partners that may wish to benefit from ReNU is enabled by the involvement of key networks and organisations such as the North East Automotive Alliance, the Engineering Employer Federation, and Knowledge Transfer Network (Energy).

In addition to industrial partners, ReNU includes Government organisations and not for-profit-organisations. These partners provide pathways to create impact via policy and public engagement. Similarly, significant academic impact will be achieved through collaborations with project partners in Singapore, Canada and China. This impact will result in research excellence disseminated through prestigious academic journals and international conferences to the benefit of the global community working on advanced energy materials.