ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES PRESSURE ENERGY HARVESTING

Project done by: Naveen balaji . K Vivek veeriah . J Avinash . M

In our day to day lives, in the process of converting energy from one form to another form, lot of energy gets wasted. This is due to the fact that no machine can have 100% efficiency i.e it can not convert the given input completely into output. If the energy that is wasted can be made to do useful work or converted into a form which can be stored for future use, lot of energy could be saved. If we consider the present day vehicles, massive amounts of mechanical energy go waste due to the friction between the road and the tyres. The highest amount of energy will be dissipated when a vehicle moves in a speed breaker. The vehicle should slow down and then again should be accelerated considerably to reach the usual speed. In addition to the energy lost in this process, more amount of energy will be lost due to inertia of the vehicle and also the friction between the two. In this paper we have tried to use some of the energy that is wasted in the process of climbing a speed breaker and storing it in the form of electrical energy. Piezoelectric crystalls have a unique property of converting stress applied to it into potential energy. The piezoelectric generators are placed under the speed breakers so that the weight of the vehicle is taken as stress by the crystalls. The piezoelectric generators harvest that energy and save them in roadside batteries that can be used by people. This process is also known as Parasitic Energy harvesting. The energy produced by a single piezoelectric generator is very small and so in a single speed breaker many generators are placed. depending upon the voltage and current needed the generators can either be connected in series or in parallel. When this technique is applied to many speed breakers more energy can be saved. Piezo Electric Generator will be able to produce 200KWh in a normal road with normal traffic, while a fourlane highway would produce about 1MWh of electricity, per day, enough to provide power to 2500 households. The energy produced varies directly with the traffic i.e during peak hours, more energy will be produced. This emerging technology will be very helpful for high populated country like india having heavy traffic roads and it is eco friendly too.