From the press release:

Industrial Wireless Temperature Transmitter Powered by Heat

ABB and Micropelt Prove Thermal Energy Harvesting to Solve the Battery Issue of Wireless Sensors
 
Freiburg, Germany -- March 10, 2010.  Wireless sensors are rather inexpensive and can be deployed almost anywhere. Deploying more sensors would lead to safer and more efficient process control, and much reduced maintenance cost – if cost and effort of battery maintenance could be obviated.

On Tuesday, the prestigeous MIT Technology Review published a story by Duncan Graham-Rowe in which he claimed that Nokia "hopes to create a device that could harvest enough power to keep a cell phone topped up."

One of the several elephants in the wireless sensor network room is the apparent need to have thousands of batteries onsite in a fully developed network, and the need to have to go change out those batteries after some years (some say three years, some say five years, some say ten years) of service. If you have 3000 wireless transmitters in your refinery or plant, are you ready to replace all those batteries on any reasonable time base? How about if you have 300? How about 30?

So there has been...

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Fundamental breakthrough creates battery-free wireless lighting control

Four Harvesters Capture 'Unused Environmental Energy'

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SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- The lighting market can be a demanding taskmaster. p It wanted battery-free, wireless lighting control, especially for large installations where battery management could be a real headache. But what could replace bat...