Techniques and mechanisms to power automatic accommodation by an eye-mountable device. In an embodiment, the eye-mountable device includes an accommodation actuator to change an optical strength of the eye-mountable device. Control logic of the eye-mountable device is to transition a supply voltage between different levels to drive operation of the accommodation actuator, including the control logic to perform a step-wise transition of the supply voltage from a first voltage level to a second voltage level. In another embodiment, the control logic includes a bidirectional direct current to direct current (DC-DC) converter. During the step-wise transition of the supply voltage, the bidirectional DC-DC converter is configured to aid in recharging a battery of the eye-mountable device with charge from the accommodation actuator.