Less is more

“Could we do the same with less energy?” After a customer asked me this question in 2008, I couldn’t get it out of my head. We were talking about the Gammapilot, our radiometric level instrument whose operating principle requires generating a high voltage inside it. That consumes 800 milliwatts of power, which may not seem like much but it is a lot in potentially explosive areas. So the power must be safely isolated from the surrounding environment. And it needs to come from a dedicated supply, meaning that two additional wires must be connected to the device, which requires a lot of effort. I started looking into this question during our regular Friday afternoon time slot when we are allowed to pursue our own pet projects. I assessed the state of the research, tried out circuitry and pondered effective ways of producing a continuous high voltage. It took me two years to make the breakthrough and in 2010, I presented a prototype that generated high voltage from just 40 microwatts.