Hundreds of companies and research institutes in the US, Europe, and Japan are working on energy harvesting technology, and the industry is attracting millions of dollars in venture capital. But despite these considerable investments, progress in bringing this technology to market has been slow. Alternative power sources contribute only a fraction to worldwide power generation, and the load on the environment, much of it toxic, is still increasing. Billions of batteries are discarded every year. Researchers are deploying energy harvesting technology in architecture projects. The energy harvesting products include windup-powered radios, cell phones with chargers, magnetic force flashlights and laptops with huge batteries.
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J. Krikke (2005) studied this question.