Designing a Wind Energy Harvester for Connected Vehicles in Green Cities

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) have recently gained momentum as an integral part of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) when authorities started expanding their low emission zones (LEZs) in an effort to build green cities with low carbon footprints. Energy is one of the key requirements of EVs, not only to support the smooth and sustainable operation of EVs, but also to ensure connectivity between the vehicle and the infrastructure in the critical times such as disaster recovery operation. In this context, renewable energy sources (such as wind energy) have an important role to play in the automobile sector towards designing energy-harvesting electric vehicles (EH-EV) to mitigate energy reliance on the national grid. In this article, a novel approach is presented to harness energy from a small-scale wind turbine due to vehicle mobility to support the communication primitives in electric vehicles which enable plenty of IoV use cases. The harvested power is then processed through a regulation circuitry to consequently achieve the desired power supply for the end load (i.e., battery or super capacitor). The suitable orientation for optimum conversion efficiency is proposed through ANSYS-based aerodynamics analysis. The voltage-induced by the DC generator is 35 V under the no-load condition while it is 25 V at a rated current of 6.9 A at full-load, yielding a supply of 100 W (on constant voltage) at a speed of 90 mph for nominal battery charging.

Feasibility studies of micro wind turbines installed on electric vehicles as range extenders using real-time analytical simulation with multi driving cycles scenarios

“…This percentage is referred to as the utilisation factor, and it equals the area of the wind turbine that can be utilised relative to the total frontal area of the vehicle multiplied by the Betz Limit of the wind turbine. [40][41][42] The area of three MWT is 0.145 m 2 and the frontal area of the EV is about 2.5 m 2 . Using 0.4 as the Betz limit of the MWT, the utilisation factor is 0.022, which can be rounded to 0.02 (20%).…”

Small wind turbines and their potential for internet of things applications

“…Khan et al. 283 proposed using SWTs to support communication devices in electric vehicles, identifying optimal locations and generating direction. Zhao et al.…”

SMLMAC-HEAP: Slotted Multi-Layer MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks Powered by Ambient Energy Harvesting

“…For this reason, experts are developing fresh methods to improve the MAC Protocol in order to boost the MAC layer's performance.Recent improvements in MAC protocols allow wireless sensor network powered by ambient energy harvesting (WSN-HEAP) to be a great choice in comparison to battery-powered networks (4)(5)(6)(7) . Presently research shows (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13) that use of ambient energy like solar, wind, water, Radio Frequency (RF) etc. concept adopted by WSN outperforms than battery-powered.…”