Sustainable energy solutions: Leveraging prickly pear biobatteries and efficient software for iot in agriculture

This study presents a sustainable energy solution for powering Internet of Things (IoT) platforms in agriculture by integrating an optimized prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) biobattery with energy-efficient software models. While plant-based energy concepts exist, this work introduces a novel, scalable electrode configuration—employing a hierarchical series-parallel topology of copper-zinc pairs—that significantly enhances power output and reproducibility. Under controlled laboratory conditions, a unit of six cladodes in series, each with six electrode pairs in parallel, generated 5 V and 26.5 mA, yielding 128.8 mW. Field deployment of a scaled system (18 cladodes) under real-world ambient conditions (22–30°C, 50–65 % RH) achieved a maximum stable power output of 0.33 W, successfully powering a LoRaWan-enabled sensor node. However, a performance degradation of approximately 25 % was observed over 72 h, primarily due to electrode corrosion and tissue desiccation. In parallel, we conducted a rigorous energy profiling of three IoT programming models: traditional, finite state machine (FSM), and real-time operating system (RTOS). The FSM model demonstrated superior energy efficiency, reducing consumption by up to 34 % compared to the traditional model, while the RTOS provided optimal performance for real-time tasks with minimal overhead. This research delivers a dual contribution: an experimentally validated, high-performance bioelectric source, and a co-designed software framework that collectively offer a practical and sustainable pathway for powering autonomous agricultural IoT systems, effectively balancing resource utilization with operational longevity.