Remarks on a PVDF Piezo-Wind Generator

Considering the increasingly demand to create new sustainable electricity generating devices in the IoT (Internet of Things) era, several models of piezoelectric generators have been proposed by many researchers. This project goal is to prototyping a piezoelectric energy harvesting system with wind power source. For the development of the prototype, an additive machining process was used through a 3D printer and piezoelectric transducers, while a microcontroller and an IoT platform were used for data collection and analysis. The design development process involves adding a plastic leaf at the end of the piezoelectric transducer and adding a tip mass to find larger deflections. The prototype takes advantage of the wind potential for a rotational movement on its central axis and the excitation produces favorable and contrary deflections of the beam to the direction of the wind that strikes the surface of the added leaf. The experimental results shows that the model reaches approximately 5 micro-watt of power harvested at 6.5 m/s of wind speed.