Volume 6, Issue 3-4

The performance of the small-scale stand-alone energy harvesters can be improved by implementing a hybrid energy harvesting technique. This paper aims at presenting the design and characterization of a hybrid energy harvester that can simultaneously harvest energy from mechanical vibration and solar radiation by combining piezoelectric, electromagnetic, electrostatic, and photovoltaic mechanisms. The hybrid device consists of a small high-efficiency solar panel and a bimorph PZT cantilever beam having a cylindrical tip magnet and two sets of capacitors (comb electrodes) attached on two sides of an ASTM 6061 T-6 Aluminum substrate. All the transducing sections of the configuration are interconnected by a smart hybrid electric circuit having a common optimum load resistance, an energy storage, and a microcontroller to generate and store combined power output when subjected to transverse vibration and solar radiation. The initial bias-voltage input required for the electrostatic mechanism is either obtained from the photovoltaic system or taken from the storage through the microcontroller. Results for the maximum power output are obtained at the fundamental resonance frequency of the vibrating cantilever beam. As the hybrid design allows a combined power harvesting method, more power is generated with better conversion efficiency than those obtained by stand-alone mechanisms. In addition to the power calculation, the study includes a stress and fatigue analysis of the cantilever beam using the finite element method to investigate the stress-life criteria of the hybrid structure.

Photovoltaic (PV) energy has become a promising energy source because the demand for electrical energy from renewable energy sources is increasing worldwide in recent decades. Due to efficiency issues, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) has been developed to optimize the solar panel’s performance. This paper presents an MPPT model, made up of the analog component, which overcomes traditional MPPT methods’ weakness via the Perturb and observes (P&O) technique. In this case, the PV system includes a PV array, a DC/DC boost converter, a battery, and a load. The proposed method was precisely built and simulated using the Powersim, MATLAB Simulink, and SimCoupler Module. The components of the analog MPPT system were designed practically in detail. The experiment was carried out by using European Efficiency Test 50530, and the results showed the proposed model has higher efficiency over the digital MPPT technique, about 99.99% as maximum. Moreover, MPPT methods were tested under steady-state, irradiation variation, and space conditions to verify the system’s potential capability with PV module Solbian 52L.

The consumption of energy has always been in exponential growth and also there is always an increasing demand in the requirement of energy in some way or the other. So, there is a need to search for energy availability from alternate sources of energy. The utilization of waste energy of foot power with human locomotion is relevant and important for highly populated countries like India where the railway station, temples, etc., are overcrowded all round the clock. When the flooring is engineered with piezoelectric technology, the electrical energy produced by the pressure is captured by floor sensors and converted to an electrical charge by piezo transducers, then stored and used as a power source. This paper deals with the generation of alternate sources of energy through piezoelectric materials. This research describes the use of piezoelectric materials to harvest energy from people walking vibration for generating and accumulating energy. This study also studies the perceptions and adaptability of piezoelectricity. The adaptability of piezoelectric technology in a real-time environment has been studied by comparing the overall cost of generating electricity with solar energy. This study also suggests a footstep of the piezoelectric energy harvesting model which is cost-effective and easy to implement.