LONDON — Intel is looking at harvesting free energy to power devices such as mobile phones, as well as researching other technologies to reduce power in electronics devices and data centers.

At an event late last week focusing on its "Eco-Technology" developments, the company's CTO, Justin Rattner, outlined a series of long-term initiatives into power saving and generation.

For instance, Rattner said Intel has devised self-powered microchips that could be implanted in the human body, a mobile phone or a a building.

Most of the technologies discussed are under development in Intel labs and, Rattner noted, are unlikely to reach the marketplace in products for at least three to five years.

In the wireless identification and sensing platform (Wisp), the sensors would use Intel technology for drawing power from the environment. "These are install-and-forget kind of systems," Rattner said.

The power would come from wireless transmissions, such as a Wi-Fi hotspot, a cellular tower, or a TV broadcast, making it possible for the sensors to continuously gather information in almost any environment, Rattner added.

The sensors would have a small radio and could provide real-time reporting on environments by sending bursts of data to receivers before recharging.

A pilot scheme has seen Wisps installed on San Francisco street sweepers to monitor air pollution.

The technology also has major implications for datacentre management, according to Rattner. Wisps implanted in datacentres could offer a far more accurate picture of heat dissipation, and allow managers to shift computing loads to cooler areas of the facility to cut costs.

He added self-powered sensors could one day go into the human body to monitor health-related activity. If researchers could shrink detectors to the molecular level, they could one day be capable of detecting viruses in the environment to determine the potential health risk.

Along with sensors, Intel labs is experimenting with the use of microchips to gather energy from other sources, such as the sun or the movement of a trackball in a smartphone, to recharge a battery in a mobile device.

For Intel, sensor technology "might turn into a business opportunity" in the future, Rattner said. But a lot of the other experimental technology is likely to be licensed for use by other companies and not necessarily end up as separate Intel products.

An example of the latter is work Intel is doing with manufacturers of power supplies for computing systems. Rattner said. Intel is working on technology that would let an IC regulate power, which would boost the efficiency to 90 percent.

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