Omnidirectional wind energy harvester for self-powered agro-environmental information sensing

Abstract Real-time monitoring of the wind vector, including wind speed and direction, is significant for crop management and production in agricultural environment. However, traditional wind vector sensors are difficult to meet the needs of modern sustainable agriculture due to their considerable size, low accuracy, and lack of energy supply. Hence, there is a great need for wind vector sensors that can respond super-sensitively to environmental stimuli without external power supply. Herein, a transparent and degradable hydroxyethyl cellulose film was introduced to fabricate a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on the slit effect for wind energy harvesting and self-powered wind vector monitoring. The maximum output voltage of slit-effect-enabled TENG (SE-TENG) is up to ~ 600 V under a wind speed of 7 m/s, and various agricultural sensors can be continuously driven. Furthermore, an omnidirectional wind energy harvester (OWEH) composed of eight SE-TENGs and an electrometer data-acquisition board was assembled to monitor the wind directions and speed ranging from 0.5 to 10 m/s accurately. This work poses an effective and green method for wind vector monitoring in agricultural environment and demonstrates the potential of TENG technology in intelligent agriculture.