Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium – Last week e-peas, a leader in energy harvesting power management technology, teamed up with Silabs in an exclusive first reveal video of e-peas’ and Silabs new Explorer Kit. In the video – which forms part of Silicon Labs’ 2025 Tech Talks webinar series – the two companies showed how smart-building, asset tracking and factory automation device OEMs, can simply and cost-effectively develop battery-less Ambient IoT systems.
This is the first unboxing of the new AEM13920 and AEM00300 dedicated energy harvesting shields, running together within Silicon Labs new Explorer Kit (featuring EFR32xMG22e) with an ultra-fast cold start and highly energy-efficient deep sleep mode. This Explorer Kit enables the use of multiple energy harvesting sources for increased flexibility and powering reliably Ambient-IoT systems.
The webinar is a full walk-through guide for developers, with demonstrations, best-practice guides, and system-level efficiency insights. Registered viewers will also get access to a GitHub software and documentation repository to simplify and speed up the design of battery-free, self-sustaining IoT devices.
“The need for OEMs to move away from batteries to the Ambient IoT is becoming urgent,” said Bruno Damien, Ecosystem Marketing Director at e-peas. “Consumers and facility managers are becoming acutely aware of the cost of maintaining these devices and the environmental impact of discarded batteries, too. But there is a knowledge gap when it comes to implementation, and we’re delighted to have partnered with Silicon Labs to help address this.”
The need to reduce the number of discarded batteries entering landfill is also a concern for governments. This includes the EU, whose 2023 positioning paper highlights the need to use energy harvesting more effectively in IoT and states that “batteries need to live longer than the IoT devices they power.”
The AEM13920 shield has been designed to manage power from multiple continuous and intermittent sources, including photovoltaic, thermal, RF, inductive, and piezoelectric systems. It delivers a 90% energy-transfer efficiency and is compatible with powering Bluetooth, Zigbee, and custom protocols from Silicon Labs. Additionally, it implements a programmable output voltage. Storage elements associated with the kit can store up to 1,000 J for a more stable and reliable power supply.
The AEM00300 shield has been designed to cope with random pulsed energy of just a few hundred microjoules without compromising energy efficiency. To achieve this, it builds on a smart architecture that has been designed to store this unpredictable pulse of energy to give a stabilized delivery to the application.
The presentation also used multi-protocol IoT solutions from Silicon Labs.
Now in their sixth year, the Silicon Labs Tech Talk webinar series partners with industry leaders to demonstrate best practice and advanced tools relating to power management and wireless technologies.
To watch ‘Harvesting Energy for Smarter IoT” Tech Talk, please visit the Silicon Labs Tech Talk page.
For further information on e-peas’ energy harvesting power management technology, please visit www.e-peas.com.
