Designing wearable microgrids: towards autonomous sustainable on-body energy management

Abstract

Inspired by traditional energy-autonomous microgrids, this perspective summarizes the key design and energy-budgeting considerations and outlook of integrated wearable systems.

Electronic textiles for energy, sensing, and communication

“…Although some attention has been directed to incorporate energy harvesters in wearable systems, their power is generally limited, and no harvesters are yet commercially available for use in e-textiles. Nevertheless, the concept of wearable microgrid has been proposed recently, advocating the critical budgeting of energy and power in e-textile systems to enhance the practicality and reliability of wearable energy systems, and its development will rely on multidisciplinary collaboration to make it a success ( Yin et al., 2021a ; 2021b ).…”

“…System powered by BFC arrays or TENG has been reported to transmit sensing data of glucose, urea, temperature, or pH of sweat to cell phones without any external power supply ( Song et al., 2020 ; Yu et al., 2020 ). Alternatively, e-textile system that combines several harvesters and storage devices has been explored, aiming to establish a microgrid-on-shirt, and display the sensing result using electrochromic display directly, hence further removing the need for external mobile devices ( Yin et al., 2021a ; 2021b ). Currently, as the energy scavenged from the harvesters is still limited in microwatt range, the functionality of the integrated systems is rather limited, compatible to only open-circuit potentiometric-based sensors.…”

An Energy-Autonomous Smart Shirt Employing Wearable Sensors for Users’ Safety and Protection in Hazardous Workplaces

“…The database is used for storing data from smart devices, alo actual GPS coordinates provided by their smartphones. Furtherm are analyzed by the IBM Cloud Functions service to detect anom data, in which case, alarm messages are sent to the database of the and a notification to the company's safety manager and the worke also includes signaling devices (e.g., LEDs) and a vibration gene warn the user when abnormal parameters (e.g., high gas concentra Furthermore, the smart garment is energetically autonomous t multisource energy harvesting system, enabling the scavenging o associated with the human body [42,43]. Two thin-film flexible pho 0.125W 5V-45*25, manufactured by Dongguan New Energy Techn Guangdong, China) are positioned on the user's back to convert i (solar or artificial) into electrical energy (Figure 3b).…”

“…Through a 1:90 external step-up converter, th configured as a flyback converter that allows a minimum input vol of three TEGs (model TEC1-12706, manufactured by Thermonamic placed on each forearm to scavenge the thermal energy produced b a larger thermal gradient (Figure 4b) [44]; elastic bands maintain TEGs' hot joints and the skin. The used TEG model has 40 mm × 40 Furthermore, the smart garment is energetically autonomous thanks to an integrated multisource energy harvesting system, enabling the scavenging of energy from sources associated with the human body [42,43]. Two thin-film flexible photovoltaic cells (model 0.125 W 5 V-45 * 25, manufactured by Dongguan New Energy Technology Co., Dongguan, Guangdong, China) are positioned on the user's back to convert incoming light energy (solar or artificial) into electrical energy (Figure 3b).…”

Smart Textile Triboelectric Nanogenerators: Prospective Strategies for Improving Electricity Output Performance

“…What we expect is to make full use of any available resources in the environment where the device is deployed. Therefore, the idea of a self-powered system is proposed, which is one of the most feasible schemes for low power electronic devices by effectively acquiring environmental energy [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”