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.