Supercapacitor energy storage for battery-less, greener IoT networks

Over the last two decades more than 75 international supercapacitor manufacturers have introduced several different supercapacitor families. Some have now reached the energy density of lead-acid batteries and while all families exhibit power density that are several orders higher than lithium based rechargeable battery chemistries. IoT devices for various sensing and monitoring applications, particularly systems deployed to monitor pollution, or ecosystem parameters have a need for self-sustaining energy sources. While batteries have been the common choice, these are not self-sustainable fit-and forget energy storage devices. In these cases modern supercapacitor families can be used to replace batteries, which can rely on lower levels of energy harvesting to become self-sustaining fit-and-forget devices. This paper presents a summary of modern supercapacitor families, used to design a minimum component count supercapacitor based power management systems for sensor networks. Some preliminary investigation results are presented, while more work is underway to develop a robust, sustainable supercapacitor energy storage solution for remote IoT devices.