Pedal power energy harvesting
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Date
2018-06
Authors
Syeikh Muhammad Haziq Sah Azmi
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Abstract
Renewable energy plays an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions such
as biofuels, solar, and wind. They are favorable and located in remote area. For example, on
cloudy days or when any disaster phenomenon occurs solar is not an efficient way to harvest
energy and leads to where the victim of the disaster cannot reach for electricity. The
temporary energy keeps used by the user until it’s drain out. Therefore, this project proposes
generate our own power by cycling during emergency situation happened. This project was
inspired based on Hurricane Maria which devastated the small town in the mountains of
central Puerto Rico, where the hurricane downed power lines throughout the area. The
conversion of food energy to external mechanical energy during physical activity has
efficiencies in the range of 2.6 - 6.5%, depending on the type of physical activity being
performed. Out of the variety of energy recovery techniques that exist, pedal motion
electricity generation shows the most promise for large-scale recovery. The voltage produced
is up to 15V to 30V. However, due to that output voltage produce by the generator is more
than battery charging requirement, a voltage regulator is need to be included to regulate the
voltage generated by permanent magnet direct current generator to a certain voltage and
current level so it can be readily use to charge up the battery without harm it. An Arduino
Mega is used as controller to isolate the speed and voltage in order to control the cut off
voltage when the battery is full. In the end, the effect of different speed of pedaling on
electrical production is also investigated. In the end of this research, it is found that slow
cycling speed gives high efficiency to harvest energy, but took long time to full charge the
battery. The amount of power generated at this condition was 7.392W. This amount of energy
enough to charge up mobile phone, light up low power LED light and fan during emergency
situation.