WTRS Executive Interview

Interview with Executive Interview with Armin Anders, VP Product Marketing and co-founder of EnOcean.

July 5, 2007

George: Can you tell us about your background and how you came to found Enocean?

Armin: I started as an electrical engineer at Infineon, when it was a part of Siemens where I worked for five years as product marketing manager for automotive microcontrollers. After that I changed to the Corporate Technology department of Siemens and was responsible for an extensive telematics research initiative. I coordinated Siemens activities with external companies, mainly in the telecom and automotive industries. After that I changed to innovation management and was part of the group that founded a technology accelerator group within Siemens. One of the ventures we founded in that group was EnOcean. I wrote the business plan and when it was decided in 2001 to spin EnOcean off from Siemens, I went along. I liked it so much that I decided to be one of the five founders of Enocean (one sales, two R&D, one executive, and myself). EnOcean is financed by Venture Capital. Siemens transferred the IPRs to the company and thus kept a minority stake in EnOcean.

George: Can you tell us a little about EnOcean the company?

Armin: Our basic mission is to develop and sell components and modules for self powered wireless sensors. Our customers are sensor manufacturers and system integrators. We founded EnOcean in 2001 and the first finished products, available from our OEM customers, were available in 2003. We now have more than four years of experience with self-powered wireless sensor products in the market place. Our first focus is the building automation sector where we have more than 50 OEM customers in series production to whom we have shipped more than 300,000 sensors for installation in more than 10,000 buildings in Europe. So I would say that the proof of concept was accomplished on a very large scale. We are now in the process of transferring  this success into the US market.

George: You did quite a lot of work to optimize the interaction between thepower harvesting, or energy harvesting, components and the wireless radio subsystems. Can you talk a little bit about what you had to do to make those two things work together?

Armin: To build self powered sensors requires several different skills. First is to develop expertise with designing and developing highly efficient energy harvesters. Secondly one requires sophisticated energy management expertise. Given that energy is power multiplied by time, we have two choices to make in order to reduce the energy needs. We obviously don't want to spare the power because it effects the transmitted range of the radio, so instead we cut down the time. In fact our signal length is down to 1 msec. Energy management also consists of considerations like operating the power-hungry portions of the microcontroller, as well as the radio, for short times only; in the order of milliseconds. When the signal switches off, we monitor the system with a permanently running wake up timer that is optimized for power consumption and uses only a few nanoamperes. This system requires magnitudes less power than typical microcontrollers.

George: To be successful, as EnOcean, you have developed key skills in building semiconductors and energy harvester technology, and integrating those which combine into a core center of IP. There are a number of intellectual property centers that Enocean has that it has developed in order to be successful as a business. Can you discuss the systems approach to self powered devices and how this led to some of the design choices made for the products?

Armin: Self-powered wireless sensors have a broad application potential that ranges from Building Automation to Industrial Automation to tire pressure monitoring to remote keyless entry and even medical. We first focused on the Building Automation market and developed the sensors, switches, and receivers required to enable the market from a product point of view. We then developed the capability to communicate via gateways to all available established system architectures. These products are all available and have been shipped into the market.

George: Can you discuss some of the design wins using Enocean technology andsome of the resulting operational efficiencies?

Armin: An example of a large building complex using Enocean technology is the SAP Headquarters in Germany with over 500 000 square foot office space using 2000 wireless nodes. Another example is the UNIQA Tower in Vienna which is 22 storey building completely fitted with low power wireless sensor network system using Enocean technology. Both locations enjoy large savings in initial installation costs (less wires), system maintenance (no batteries), total flexibility and cost savings in any future renovation and constant savings in operating cost (energy). It was for us a lesson learned to convince all the customers in the value chain about new technologies and the value they bring. You need to find a way to create a market pull. We went to facility managers because they could see the obvious value to our products. Then we also went to specifiers to demonstrate to them the cost reduction available in the system when you use our products, as well as the flexibility afforded by wireless in hard to wire places. Finally we went to the Architects, who are very design oriented and value a very different set of criteria. The switch has to look nice. We had to design our switches to suit their aesthetics but the result is that it is now easier to create the market pull we require to sell.

George: Can you talk about the modes of energy generation you are using?

Armin: We are currently developing nearly all kinds that are currently discussed in the community. We started with two; linear motion generation, first piezoelectric and now the lower cost and smaller sized electro-dynamic converter; and indoor light conversion. Indoor light conversion works because people are inside the home and they want the lights on. Only two hours of indoor light is sufficient to generate 24 hours of stored energy in our products. We have developed tire pressure monitoring for automotive customers which uses vibration energy conversion. We also have a thermal conversion device that needs only 2 degrees centigrade of temperature difference to power a wireless sensor. Finally we are working on a rotational conversion device that uses a mini dynamo. Of course we will see what comes next.

George: Is there anything that we missed?

Armin: If there has been one lesson learned for us it was that people underestimate the time from product readiness to market success. We focus on conservative markets first. In our niche the path to market was to develop a proof of concept first. This is opposed to the consumer market that focuses only on price, price, price. Now that we are in over 10.000 buildings, it is easier. You can't build up a 55 to 100 floor building without being able to do a 30 floor building first. If you don't satisfy your customer, that will be the last building you ever equip.

More information about EnOcean here...

This interview ran in our July 5, 2007 newsletter issue.