Feasibility Analysis of Supercapacitor for L ightning Energy Conversion System

Abstract

Lightning is a very high voltage electrostatic emission consisting of highly charged electrostatic particles. However, limited literature is available in the field of the Lightning energy harvesting area due to the hazards involved and the intermittent nature of lightning. A lightning bolt does have convenient energy. Still, empirically, energy harnessing and storage is a difficult task due to confusion existed in the selection of impulse storage device. This paper presents a feasibility analysis of supercapacitors to store energy extracted from a high voltage surge. The analysis is performed by connecting the impulse generator as a source of the supercapacitor. Different loads are connected sequentially with the supercapacitor to assess the applicability of the proposed numerical model. The impulse generator is designed in the simulation model as a replica of the Tesla coil hardware constructed for the lightning energy conversion system. Lightning energy conversion system is an innovative system which can convert high voltage lightning in storable form. Also, a real-time pulse has been generated for the Seven level inverter by interfacing Atmel ATMEGA328P-PU microcontroller in the MATLAB environment. The computational model used in this paper produced 0.0027% to 0.7% SOC percentage of supercapacitor for single waveform and different loads. This paper may drive the lightning energy research towards a positive influence by its conceptual resolution.