Energy harvesting through piezoelectric technology

Abstract

Small-scale energy harvesting using non-conventional methods are becoming very popular because they are eco-friendly. When the vehicles move on the road, the energy from vehicle movement can be harnessed using piezoelectric transducers. This paper proposes a scheme for harvesting the energy using piezoelectric technology to power a DC lamp of 12 V and 12 W. Synthetic-type Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) piezo transducers are used in the current work. These transducers are highly sensitive to applied pressure but the voltage generated will be less than 1.5 V from each cell. Therefore, 16 cells are connected in series to obtain a voltage of 24 V. The voltage generated from piezo transducers will be alternating in nature. Therefore, this voltage is rectified using a 1ϕ full bridge rectifier. The rectifier output is fed to a DC-DC buck-boost converter to get the required voltage and currents for a DC load of 12 W. Modeling of the piezo transducer, simulation and experimental results of the proposed method are presented in this paper. The proposed configuration can be deployed to harvest energy on the roads due to vehicle movements which can be used for lighting the lamps on the roads.