The UK's Technology Strategy Board has made available one million pounds for a series of collaborative projects on energy harvesting for autonomous sensing. The aim is to support demonstration of low power energy harvesting in new and challenging real world applications, the exploration of novel energy harvesting techniques for practical use and the potential to improve harvesting through developments in areas such as power management systems.

This is the perfect opportunity for companies whose sensing solutions are limited by the lifetime and reliability issues of batteries to evaluate whether energy harvesting might be a solution for their particular applications. The application process is simple (single stage) and quick and the competition is designed to allow those needing to address powering of autonomous sensors to access energy harvesting expertise.

The projects are expected to last 6-18 months and can attract public funding of up to 75% with a maximum grant of £100k for an individual project. They must be industry led and have at least two collaborating partners. There is plenty of energy harvesting expertise in the UK that could help companies assess the potential of the technology. There are several of the world's leading academic groups with practical experience in energy harvesting systems development and deployment, a number of technology consultancies with relevant experience and a small number of companies that sell either energy harvesting systems or components.

To find out more about the competition please refer to the briefing document.

The official Technology Strategy Board call briefing event is on 23 October 2012 in London or alternatively there is a webinar on the same date.

A series of regional workshops have been organised by the Knowledge Transfer Networks to promote the call and to help organisations explore ideas and find partners. Details of these can be found here.

The Energy Harvesting Network can also act as 'broker', putting interested parties in contact with potenital industrial and/or academic collaborators. To take advantage of this service, please email info@eh-network.org.

To stay informed on further competitions, events and other developments in the field we recommend that you join the Technology Strategy Board's Energy Harvesting Special Interest Group. This and the Energy Harvesting Network are both good sources of information on potential partners to provide the necessary energy harvesting expertise for your project.