This Dutch start-up prevents 30 billion battery-powered IoT sensors from being thrown away every year

How do you avoid throwing away 30 billion sensors on machines every year because the battery is dead? By continuously supplying those sensors with electricity from the vibrations of those machines, so they don't need a battery, is the answer from Dutch start-up Memsys. "We want to break the disposable cycle."

It looks like a small, square metal plate, Memsys' patented Quartz Energy Harvester. Eventually it should fit on tip of your finger. It's a kind of little dynamo or generator, which generates a little current when it deforms or vibrates. You charge that little bit of current into a capacitor or rechargeable battery. Put the whole thing on an industrial sensor or tracker and it converts vibrating machine movements into the electricity those devices need.

Kinetic Energy

This is called kinetic energy and is similar to watches that run on energy from moving your wrist. Memsys has developed its own vibration sensor for its harvester, which recharges itself with kinetic energy and therefore never runs out of power. It is the world's first self-powered vibration sensor. "Instead of using energy to measure vibrations, we use vibrations to generate energy," says CEO and founder Thijs Blad of Memsys.

Smarter maintenance

More and more machines and devices in the world today have sensors or trackers. For automation, for process optimization and predictive maintenance. Those sensors transmit data about the status of those machines via the Internet of Things (IoT) so they can be controlled remotely, but also to plan maintenance smarter and more efficiently and prevent breakdowns or failures. That way, factories work more efficiently and use less energy. Only drawback: when the battery runs out, the sensors are discarded. This is no longer necessary with the Quartz Energy Harvesters and the sensors from Memsys. In fact, these can keep recharging themselves.

Spin-off TU Delft

The company is a spin-off from TU Delft, where Blad and his co-directors Hugo Romer (CCO) and Philip Seijger (COO) studied. Blad made several discoveries in the field of kinetic energy during his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering. "These were inventions that I saw potential in this type of application, such as replacing batteries. That could also be a good product in society," he says. In early 2022, he founded Memsys to pursue those innovations. Ten people now work full-time and eight more students at the start-up.

Focus on industry

Initially, Memsys focused on rail freight transport. For this, the company developed battery-less trackers, which convert the kinetic energy of wagon vibrations into electricity. These can replace current battery-powered trackers. "If that battery runs out, companies lose their wagon after about three years. We can make sure that battery doesn't run out," Romer explained. "But it's still a slow market, where we couldn't make an impact fast enough. That's why we turned to industry for our first market. There are two reasons for that. Industry is already a lot further along with sensors for predictive maintenance and process optimization. The other reason is that there are a lot of vibrations. From electric motors to pumps and conveyors. That also often indoors, where you can't get out with a solar panel."

Breaking the waste cycle

Seijger cites a third reason for choosing this market: the disposable culture. "Per day, 78 million batteries from industrial IoT go into the trash. That's nearly 30 billion batteries a year worldwide. From lithium to small batteries. Usually with sensor and all. They are thrown away because you can't easily access the sensors. It's too expensive to take the sensor away, charge it and put it back. That's why they replace the whole sensor and throw away the old one," he explains. "With our vibration sensor, we want to break that throw-away cycle."

First milestone

The proprietary vibration sensor for the industrial IoT market was successfully tested for the first time in late November. The sensor ran without batteries on an industrial fan and had enough power to transmit all the necessary data over that device. "That was a nice milestone," says Romer. In March 2025, the sensor will be placed with a Dutch customer for the first time. There, a major sensor manufacturer immediately hooks up, wanting to build this technology into hundreds of thousands of sensors. For those devices, Memsys will supply the battery module. To make maximum impact, the start-up does not want to keep this technology to itself, but rather collaborate with developers of wireless sensors and other electronics.

Award won

In early October, Memsys and its battery-less sensors won the Smart Maintenance Impact Award 2024 at the World Class Maintenance annual event. "That endorses our story that with smarter measurement and smart planning of maintenance you can get a lot more efficiency out of the same plant and the same amount of people. If you can also facilitate that in a way that you don't have to rely on continually throwing away millions of batteries; they were keen on that," says Blad.

Source: Change Inc.