Breaking Free of the Battery Cage: Manufacturing Light Energy Harvesting at Scale

Dracula Technologies details how OPV energy harvesting can cut battery reliance at scale

As the Internet of Things expands into nearly every industry, we’re seeing a clear bottleneck: battery-powered edge devices don’t scale. In high-volume deployments like smart buildings, asset tracking networks, smart labels and consumer remotes, batteries create recurring maintenance costs, downtime risk, and a growing sustainability burden.

OEMs need an alternative to wired and battery-based architectures that is ready for mass production and reduces dependency on batteries in the first place.

That’s exactly why we published our new white paper, “Breaking Free of the Battery Cage: Manufacturing Light Energy Harvesting at Scale” (White Paper 2026, Version 1.1). In it, we explain how organic photovoltaic (OPV) light energy harvesting can provide reliable energy generation for many low-power indoor applications, and how teams can integrate OPV into designs quickly and move to volume production with confidence.

Why this matters now

When batteries run out, someone has to replace them. At scale, that becomes a major operational cost. In our white paper, we illustrate a representative enterprise scenario with 25,000 sensors across locations. Over the system lifetime, a battery-powered approach can drive around €5 million in maintenance and more than 250,000 batteries to dispose of.

With energy harvesting based on OPV, maintenance can drop to around €3 million, representing up to 40% savings, while also materially improving the sustainability profile of the deployment.

Why indoor light is the right energy source for many IoT devices

Most low-power IoT devices spend the majority of their time in deep sleep and wake briefly to sense and transmit. That behavior is ideal for energy harvesting because devices can operate on a small, continuous “trickle” of energy and store it for short active bursts.

Indoor ambient light is typically 400 to 1000 lux, far below outdoor daylight. OPV is designed to work efficiently in these low-light conditions. Our modules can generate energy at 50 lux, and even down to 5 lux in minimum conditions, making them suited for offices, homes, warehouses, and other indoor environments.

Designing for energy need, not battery capacity

A key shift we highlight is moving from “battery capacity thinking” to “energy need thinking.” With energy harvesting, storage is replenished regularly, so devices often don’t need a large battery sized for months or years.

Instead, they can be designed around the operating capacity needed to reliably perform daily tasks. This can reduce or eliminate the battery, shrink device size, lower bill of materials, and even reduce shipping costs.

How we manufacture OPV for high-volume products

We developed a unique inkjet precision printing approach to produce OPV cells using our LAYER technology, printing flat stacks of organic layers that are then encapsulated to protect the active materials.

Because the cells are printed, we can deliver custom shapes and sizes matched to a product’s form factor and energy requirements. For production, we supply OPV modules by sheet or pre-cut to custom shapes for pick-and-place assembly.

We also offer LAYER Vault, a companion electrical storage layer behind the OPV cell. Depending on the application, it can provide enough storage to reduce or replace separate storage components.

To support large deployments, we have volume manufacturing in place today, with annual capacity at 150 million cm² of OPV, and committed expansion toward approximately 1 billion cm² by mid-2026.

Faster integration through agile prototyping

We built an agile prototyping process so OEM teams can validate feasibility early without expensive tooling. Because our OPV cells are printed, no molds are required. Defining a custom cell specification can take just a few hours, and we can deliver custom prototypes in 4 to 5 weeks. Once a design is verified, specifications can be locked for volume production.

We also provide evaluation options, including an OPV Demo Kit Max and an OPV Evaluation Kit (Demo Kit Max plus PMIC) to help teams regulate and optimize harvesting for low-light environments.

Read our white paper “Breaking Free of the Battery Cage: Manufacturing Light Energy Harvesting at Scale” to learn how OPV works, how to calculate real device energy needs, and how to accelerate prototypes toward mass production.

Want to assess feasibility for your product? Get in contact with our team to discuss your use case, light conditions, energy budget, and integration options for prototypes and volume manufacturing.