Here comes a dazzling DYI project allowing you to touch an electric arc (30 kV hey presto) with your bare fingers. No harm from that. Though powered by a mere USB charger, Spiral Micro Tesla generates spectacular and sonorous sparks. Instead of a large and potentially dangerous coil, Elektor presents this safe printed Tesla coil with limited energy, powered at under 5 V. The maximum power is 5 watts which can’t cause much damage, despite the staggering voltage.

A research group at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan has been working on submersible turbines to generate electrical energy from ocean currents and waves...

The Grange Castle Business Park in Clondalkin, Ireland is home to data centres operated by Microsoft, and internet giant Google and other companies. The concentration of data centres there, and their relatively rapid deployment, has placed enormous strain on the local electricity network. Enough strain for the the local Electricity Supply Board to say that one large data centre can consume as much electricity as a large regional town such as Drogheda and that the growth in electricity demand because of new and planned data centres is "unprecedented".

French company Netatmo has launched the latest addition to the smart home – an IoT-enabled radiator valve. The product is claimed to help users to make major savings – up to 37% – on the energy they use to heat their homes by controlling heat on a room-by-room basis. Netatmo, which has previously launched products including smart security cameras and indoor climate monitors, said the new Smart Valve can be fitted on any hot-water radiator and then set a heating schedule for each room based on the habits of their occupants. Users can then customise the temperature of each room in the house from an app.

Researchers from the Lappeenranta University of Technology and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland have developed a process that produces single-cell proteins using just electrical energy and CO2. Their goal is to produce protein for human consumption or as animal feed without the environmental pollution associated with traditional agriculture...

13.7 nW/Mbit is claimed by Renesas as a record low stand-by power for embedded SRAM. Speed has been retained at 1.8 ns for an active read-out. The firm said it used its in-house 65-nm silicon-on-thin buried oxide (SOTB) process for the prototype, and used substrate biasing to adjust the leakage/speed compromise. The technology is claimed overcome challenges with conventional CMOS, such as the increased leakage with low-threshold transistors and high variability in gate threshold voltage.

Developed by Korean researchers, a new sensor uses vibration in water not only to measure the intensity, but also as a source of electric power. The prototype consists of a triboelectric generator, a super capacitor and a custom 65-nm CMOS chip, connected to LEDs that indicate vibration amplitude and frequency.

EBM Edition 2 / 2017 for May & June covers Power Supplies, Batteries and Energy, three areas in which startup companies should see a lot of potential to bring their products to market. It can be done! One such startup, MOWEA, won 75,000 euros worth of marketing budget during the Fast Forward Awards competition staged by Elektor and electronica Munich last year.

Before electric lighting became common in the early 20th century, candles and oil lamps were commonly used for illumination. Even a modern candle producing approximately 80 W of heat energy has a luminous efficacy almost a hundred times lower than an incandescent light bulb. Tea lights are even worse. With a Peltier element it is possible to convert the heat released by a tea light into electricity and drive a highly efficient LED reading light, allowing you to read your favourite book by electric candle light.

Efficiency booster for candles. The peltier lamp converts heat energy released by a tea light into electric energy in order to drive a USB LED light.