Design and Analysis of a Hybrid Solar and Vibration Energy Harvester

Abstract

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.