Using a commercially available Konstantan yarn that is traditionally used in costume decoration we were able to create a power generating textile that uses the temperature differential between the body heat of the wearer and the external environment thanks to the Seebeck Effect. At the same time the textile can be used as a Peltier element by using an H-Bridge to reverse the power flow.

We demonstrated that we can monitor the amount of excess heat generated by athletes which is important due to the fact that performance is decreased by 10% for every degree Celsius over 37 of the skin surface.

Research on the thermoelectric effects of this fiber combination has continued with a new sample made recently at the CRTTT textile research center in Barcelona at the Eurocat Soft Wearables Conference Workshop. Original documentation can be found at etextile-summercamp.org.