Authors - Leonardo Juan Ramirez Lopez, Cristian Santiago Cruz Jimenez, Johan Sebastian Ayala Gaitan Abstract - Ongoing technological progress has significantly increased global energy demand, particularly in rapidly developing economies, a trend further intensified by continuous population growth. Although improving energy efficiency is a universal objective, it remains an unresolved challenge. Advances in science and engineering have enabled the creation of diverse energy-harvesting technologies that utilize established non-conventional sources— such as solar, wind, thermal, hydro, piezoelectric, electromagnetic, and bio-battery systems—as well as emerging concepts like rectenna-based collection. This study aims to present a comprehensive evaluation and comparison of these technologies by examining their energy sources, availability, conversion principles, infrastructure needs, production costs, performance outputs, application domains, overall efficiency, harvesting capacity, constraints, resource characteristics, and commercial feasibility. By offering a systematic comparison, the authors seek to clarify the strengths of each approach while also highlighting the practical challenges involved in applying them to meet present and future global energy demands through both existing and prospective alternative energy solutions. The main objective of this paper is to systematically evaluate and compare a wide range of energy harvesting technologies—spanning established non-conventional sources and emerging concepts—by analyzing their operating principles, resource availability, infrastructure requirements, cost, efficiency, performance, limitations, and practical applicability, with the aim of identifying their strengths, challenges, and potential contributions toward meeting current and future global energy demands through sustainable alternative solutions.
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