Piezoelectric Energy Harvester
Energy harvesting or scavenging is a very interesting process of catching the wasted energy from naturally occurring energy sources, gathering and its storage for the later use. Electricity has become a lifeline for the human population and the demand of electricity is increasing day by day. For the use of the modern technology a large amount of electrical power is required for its various operations, thus electricity production is a major concern. The gap between the demand and supply of electricity for humankind has highlighted the need of exploration of the alternative and sustainable energy sources.
An alternative to the conventional power sources is the need of the time. More than two decades the Energy Harvesting technologies are extensively explored by the researchers. The limitations faced by the remote, portable and implantable devices are limited life time, requirement of periodic recharging. Amongst the known ambient energy sources like the solar energy, wind energy, Thermal energy, electromagnetic radiation energy etc…, vibrational energy presents a persistent presence in nature without depleting the natural resources. Various materials, either naturally occurring or man-made due to the transduction mechanism are able to convert the vibrational energy into useful electrical energy. Accordingly piezoelectric transducers, are widely explored to generate power from vibration energy sources.
When people walk, they generate vibrational energy that can be converted into electrical energy. The actual electro-kinetic floor is really a need of the time to extract electrical energy. This type of energy produced will be free of pollution, cost effective, one time investment as the power floor does not require any fuel or any type of energy source for its working. This study involves the use of piezoelectric energy harvester to convert the mechanical energy into electrical energy. An energy harvester has typically three main components; the micro-generator for converting ambient energy into electrical energy, the voltage booster to pump up and regulate the generator voltage and the storage.
The power systems that are based on vibrations are mainly the resonant systems, where the resonant frequency of generators matches the ambient vibrational frequency to produce maximum power. The frequency of human walking is less than 10 Hz, thus harvesting the energy from the human body including the walking energy is a source for providing electricity for low powered devices hence each individual has a potential to become a power generator. Thus, we focus on the designing and successfully using the piezoelectric transducers for the energy harvesting.
This work focusses to demonstrate the use of piezoelectric tiles that can be placed on the crowded roads to harvest the electrical power from the vibrational energy from the pedestrian footfalls and the vehicles.
