Hybrid solar and rain drop energy harvester
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Date
2019-06
Authors
Anis Nur’izzati Binti Azman
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Abstract
Due to the growing demand for low power consumer electronic device, energy harvesting from renewable energy such as solar, wind, biomass, and vibration become more favoured in recent years. In this study, the energy harvester based on the raindrop and solar is proposed. The commercial product of a piezoelectric device by Pro-Wave and a 2.5W of a solar cell from Cytron is used. The objectives of this investigation are to analyse the performance the commercial polymer film of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) by Pro-wave as well to study the effect of light intensity on the efficiency of photovoltaic system. Furthermore, to investigate the feasibility of integrating photovoltaic and piezoelectric system. The water drop was set to be 1.3m from the piezoelectric device. NE 300 syringe pump equipment was used to generate water drops. Two types of configuration such as cantilever and bridge configuration were compared to determine the best configuration that generates the highest output voltage. Then, the effect of tap water and rainwater on output performance are further investigated. Furthermore, the optimum circuit arrangement for the piezoelectric device either connecting six piezoelectric devices in series, parallel or multi-harvester is determined. For the solar cell, the effect of light intensity on the generated output voltage is investigated. Finally, the output from both energy harvester is then connected to a rechargeable battery in a parallel connection to perform a hybrid system. The results revealed that cantilever configuration produced the highest output voltage by 𝑉ି = 15.61𝑉. Whereas, the bridge configuration generates 𝑉ି = 2.98𝑉. Besides, rainwater with PH value of 5.45 used seem does not gave effect on the performance of the piezoelectric device. Furthermore, results revealed that parallel circuit arrangement generates the highest output power by 0.39µW across 1MΩ resistor while multi- harvester circuit arrangement generates the second highest output power by 0.23µW across resistor of 1MΩ. But the most amount for rechargeable battery been charged was using multiharvester circuit arrangement by 8mV while parallel circuit arrangement was 4mV within 3 minutes. Besides that, results revealed that the intensity light was affecting the performance of the photovoltaic device. During the cloudy day, the rechargeable battery was been charged up to 98mV while during clear day, the rechargeable battery was been charged up to 200mV. Finally, this study also found that percentage contribution for the solar during clear day was 100% due to the absent of rain made the solar take over the charging duty. While, the percentage contribution for the solar during cloudy day was 21.95% and piezoelectric by 78.04%.