The Power of Design: Product Innovation in Sustainable Energy Technologies

D.2 An Overview of Selection Strategies

To give the designer more insight into the world of (alternative) power sources, this section will review tools and methods in which different power and energy sources are compared. Different search and selection strategies are applicable during the concept development phase:

1. Power source selection for a specific application (Section D.2.1). This is especially interesting for the industrial designer while designing portable electronics with specific performance characteristics.

2. Application selection (Section D.2.2). Instead of seeking power sources to fit a new application, how can we identify applications for a new power source?

3. Power source design tools (Section D.2.3). These help the designer in dimensioning the power source.

4. Optimization tools (Section D.2.4). Here all possible configurations of power sources and energy containers are evaluated and optimized for single or multiple objectives.

In the rest of Section D.2, these strategies will be described more in depth.

D.2.1 Power Source Selection Tools

Four main aspects of power sources for portable electronics are of interest for the designer: capacity and power per unit of (1) size, (2) weight, and (3) costs. Flipsen (2006) compared alternative power sources among each other based on these aspects. A large database of commercially available power and energy sources and combinations thereof is used to compare them as shown in Figure D.2.1. Due to its restriction to ...