Self sufficient slot machines by Energy harvesting

1. Invisible Innovation with Micro-energy harvesting
A Novel approach for energy efficiency in casino game floors
Prithiviraj Damodaran

2. Energy efficiency - Market Trends
• 2003 – Seiko launches thermic wrist watches with Nanostructured TEGs
• 2008 – BMW launches hybrid vehicles with regenerative braking with TEG
• 2009 - Jeffrey Snyder talks about Nanostructured Thermoelectric for power
generations
• 2010 - Fujitsu Develops Hybrid Micro-energy harvesting device for generating
electricity from heat and Light, to be commercialized in 2015
• 2011 – Recent IDTechEx research talks about forecasts , players and
opportunities for Micro-energy harvesting between 2012-2022
Micro-Energy harvesting – A clear trend and a huge strategic market

3. What’s Energy Harvesting?
Energy harvesting (also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging) is the process by
which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., solar power, thermal energy, wind energy,
salinity gradients, and kinetic energy)

4. When does energy harvesting make sense?
One or more of these
characteristics are
required for energy
harvesting to make
sense
• Harvestable energy available
• Wiring too expensive
• Difficult to power device
• High Installation cost
• Numerous devices
• Difficult to reach for maintenance
• Environment friendliness required
• High uptime demanded

5. Micro-Energy Harvesting Market Forecast
Source : Hi-Globe

6. Micro-Energy Harvesting current market intelligence

7. Typical micro-energy harvesting applications
• Powering on wireless sensor networks
• For instance: A remote sensor installed in hard to reach or hazardous areas,
need this application thus avoiding need for batteries and maintenance. This
makes the buildings greener as well.
• ABB’s Energy harvesting application (1:19)

8. Challenges in micro-energy harvesting
• Operating directly from a harvester could be a design challenge, it depends
on
 Constant power source or matching harvestable energy
 Output power matching the peak current requirement
 Relatively sizable harvester

9. With these trends a Casino floor appears like a huge
play ground for micro-energy harvesting
Is this apparent opportunity a real opportunity ?
Lets check out

10. Imagining a self sufficient slot machine

11. Data + Assumptions
Variables Values
Benchmarked micro-energy that can be harvested from a Indoor light
source
~ 10 uWh / Sq.Cm *
Benchmarked micro-energy that can be harvested from hear from a
machine source
~ 10 mWh / Sq.Cm *
Average Slot machine Power consumption ~ 569 Wh **
Area size of a casino floor which can serve as energy source includes
light , heat, vibrations, RF, humans
~ 25,000 Sq feet (Or) 23225760 SQ
Cm
Conservatively the approximate energy that can be harvested for
25,000 sq ft area
~ 232.5 kWh
* - Sources: ECN Magazine on average power throughput from various energy sources
** - Slot Machine average power consumption

12. Period
How much power a slot machine needs ?
AVG Power
When Active
AVG Power
when Standby
12 hrs ? ?
1 hr ? ?
1 min ? ?
1 sec ? ?

13. How much power we can create from casino floor ?
Output power
Energy from all sources
Dependent variables
Ambient heat = ?
Ambient light = ?

14. Concept evaluation by building a prototype
 Futureenergysolutions.com – micro-energy harvesting platform
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNA-ixbU2DQ

15. The Critical Unknowns
1. Cost of Energy Harvesting unit (Initial and life time)
2. Efficiency of the micro-energy harvesting unit
3. Cost of engineering the solution into a EGM
4. What will be the volume of energy the expected sources inside casino can produce from different size casinos
5. Cost savings in power usage for the casino (Drop in energy consumption by Slots + implicit Drop in A/C energy
consumption)
6. How feasible is to design a EGM solution that can operate directly from a energy harvester
7. Cost of the new Power management unit’s battery replacement.
8. What will be the capacity of the battery in mAh we would need in the new Power management unit.
9. Environmental impact of the new power management unit’s battery.
10. Are EGM’s read to use D/C power or Should the alternate power be converted back to A/C for EGMs to use ?

16. Thanks !