Electrification of streets of Dhaka city using solar and piezoelectric energy

Abstract

This research paper carries out a proposal to implement an efficient way to electrify the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, using solar power. Recently, government has launched a project named “Solar Photovoltaic-Powered LED (Light Emitting Diode) Street Lighting” to electrify the streets of Dhaka using only solar panels. Under the prevailing project, 122 LED lights, each of 30W are installed to electrify approximately 2 km streets. But after implementation, it has been found that 60-100W LED light is required for adequately illuminating the streets which will allow the ADB fund to cover only 250-300 km streets. Our proposal is to use the solar panels implemented in this project more efficiently and to carry out a realistic experimental approach to enhance the solar output power to a significant level with the application of solar concentrator and piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit. The method is arranged using `Double Sun Technology'. A remarkable enhancement in the output power is achieved with this method. Rather than using only a solar panel, the output power increases by 12.14% by using a photovoltaic (PV) panel with two flat mirrors as concentrator. To implement the project more efficiently, the concept of piezoelectricity have been introduced. In this paper, piezoelectric-based energy-harvesting technology is applied to generate electricity from roadways. The piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit was designed and simulated in PSPICE. A voltage doubler and a bridge rectifier were wired to the equivalent circuit model of the piezoelectric materials. The vibration present on the roadways from the movement of the vehicles was applied in the form of voltage to the energy harvesting circuit. The goal of this experiment is to investigate whether piezoelectricity would be able to provide sufficient source of voltage to charge the parent battery in case of rainy or cloudy days.