E-peas on their energy harvesting and processing solutions at Embedded World

Wevolver: Hello, my name is Kyran. I'm part of the Wevolver team and today we are with Goeffroy at e-peas. Could you introduce yourself?

Goeffroy: Sure. I'm Geoffroy, CEO and Co-Founder of e-peas, a semiconductor company focusing on delivering energy harvesting dedicated PMICs to the market.

Wevolver: Great. We're really curious to learn more about your products. Let's have a look behind us. Could you a bit more about what we're looking at here?

Goeffroy: So you're looking at our first commercial successes in the remote control market especially. We've seen a great traction with remote controls that do not need battery swaps while being used by consumers, which is, we believe, a great asset. And also on the other side you can see another consumer product which is solar keyboards, which we believe is also very nice for consumers that will not have to either use cable or recharge their Bluetooth based keyboards.

Wevolver: Awesome. Can we have a look at the ones in the back that I'm seeing over there? And also could you dive a bit more into the applications of them?

Goeffroy: So on the back there, it's not really applications, it's more our products that we are focusing on and also the partners that we are working with. You can see PV cell partners, but also partnerships we build with big semiconductor companies like Qorvo, Silicon Labs and others with which we are working to promote energy harvesting on the market. 

Wevolver: E-peas is at the forefront of energy saving. I'm curious if you could tell a bit more about this. How you trying to make it more energy efficient?

Goeffroy: Well, from the first day of e-peas creation, we strongly believe that using primary non-rechargeable batteries is definitely a waste of people's time and generating a lot of waste for the environment. So our goal from day one has been to replace those primary batteries with much more environmental friendly innovations that prevent leaving primary batteries on the field and polluting our environment, but also reducing the overall total cost of ownership of devices.

Wevolver: Let's dive a bit deeper into the partnerships with Qorvo. Could you talk a bit more about this collaboration?

Goeffroy: So with Qorvo, what we did is that we've been collaborating with them building this reference design that integrates their most advanced Bluetooth chipset, lowest power Bluetooth chipset together with our energy harvesting solutions to demonstrate to the market that you can actually supply Bluetooth-based devices thanks to the ambient energy that surrounds the device rather than using non-rechargeable batteries. So indeed, we are collaborating with other semiconductor companies because we are pushing a new technology on the market. And we believe that the best way to convince people to switch to this new technology is to have different people carrying the same message to the industry. For example, we've built this reference design with Qorvo that is basically their newest matter chipsets that they combine with our energy harvesting chipsets to show to their customers that you can build a Matter wireless device working on energy harvesting. We've also developed what they call at Silabs, energy harvesting shields that go together with their wireless boards and also one of their newest wireless chipsets that combines Bluetooth and Zigbee capabilities to promote energy harvesting on the smart home smart building applications.

Wevolver: Geoffroy, why is the smart home market interested in energy saving? And also what are the biggest pain points you can see and trends in the future?

Goeffroy: As you know, smart home and smart buildings are more and more connected with security devices and other kind of sensors and I think we need to differentiate smart home and smart building. Smart home is your place, my place, where I'm going to go to the shop and buy a device, whether it's a fire detector or other window door sensors. And the thing is that we will have to be taking care of replacing the batteries of those devices. And since they tend to multiply in our households, I think having devices that do not require those battery swaps is very important and is an added value for the customers. And in the smart building it's even worse because, well, the people that are deploying those sensors in the smart buildings are usually responsible for swapping the batteries. And when you are dealing with multiple buildings at some point, replacing those batteries is a real pain. So again, having energy autonomous devices that you can install and forget is definitely an added value for the smart building market as well.

Wevolver: So over the years at e-peas, you have been doing a lot of innovation. I'm curious if all this innovation you've been accumulating is being translated into new products.

Goeffroy: Yeah, absolutely. So, less than a year ago, we launched on the market our most advanced PMIC that combines two different energy sources and also almost all of the innovations that we've been developing over the years. So this chipset is the 13920. You can combine two different sources, like two different PV cells, an indoor and an outdoor PV cell, or combine a PV cell with a thermoelectric generator to harvest energy from heat, temperature differences and light to build more reliable devices. So, take as an example, a thermostatic valve. You can combine, harvesting energy from the heater to which it is connected and also light in the room to make the system more reliable. And, yeah, just make it last longer.

Wevolver: Thanks, Geoffroy, for all the latest products you've been sharing with us. I'm really curious to learn a bit more. You know, what can we expect from e-peas in the future? What are some trends or are you going to work on in the future? Whatever you're able to share.

Goeffroy: Well, what you can expect is more innovation from e-peas. We already have a large portfolio of products for energy harvesting, covering multiple sources and multiple storage elements going from 3 microwatts to half a watt that can be harvested, extracted from energy harvesters. Now we see some applications where more power has to be extracted. So the next product we'll be releasing will be able to extract up to 3 watts of power. And that's something we'll announce, I would say, in the next three to five months. So just stay tuned and you'll know more about us.

Wevolver: Awesome. All the best.

Goeffroy: Thank you.