Are You an Energy Scavenger?

I am working on circuitry to attempt to scavenge miniscule bits of energy. I can't say much about it but it is an interesting topic.

This may be off topic. I went the the Kitchen and Bath show in Chicago last month. There is one vendor with a faucet (for household kitchens, baths and utility rooms) that has a built in turbine, generator, temperature sensor and LEDs. When water flows, the column of water in the sink glows blue if it is cold. It glows red if it is hot. It was one of the best displays I saw at the show.

A customer of ours installed a current transducer, which surrounded a current transformer secondary (5 amp at full range through the CT) and used the low voltage DC output to charge the wireless DAQ system batteries they needed to power. I thought this was quite clever. The transducer range was 0-10 amps AC, output 0-5 VDC, and needs nothing external to derive the output. With only 5 amps in the CT secondary, the maximum voltage would be 2.5 VDC.

Since there was plenty of high power being used by pumping equipment, they saved a great deal of time and complication by eliminating a control power transformer and a DC power supply.