Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS
Peter Spies has been conducting research into energy supply for communication systems at Fraunhofer IIS since 1998. Read on to find out how his work led him from energy-efficient wireless systems to smart screws, and what he believes makes this technology so economical, sustainable and secure.
Peter Spies doesn’t have a long history with screw connections, but there’s another subject that has interested him since the start of his career at Fraunhofer IIS.
“My focus is on energy efficiency. Since I joined Fraunhofer, I’ve been working on making energy supplies for communication systems more efficient.”
Peter’s research quickly led him to energy harvesting, a technology that he has played a key role in developing for more than 20 years. Energy harvesting is a sustainable method for obtaining electrical energy from environmental energy. He first used this method – a “green” alternative to batteries and a wireless way to generate electricity – to supply energy to wireless systems, but his contact with other Fraunhofer projects inspired him to combine the two technologies to make a smart screw connection.
“I heard about a sensor technology that made it possible to measure the temperature in a pipe by combining a screw with a temperature sensor. I thought to myself: Wouldn’t it be possible to use these already-warm screws to generate energy and use it to transmit the measurement data?”
