Wind energy conversion system for a moving vehicle

Abstract

India has the second largest road network in the world, since the highway is wide open space there will not be any obstruction for the wind flow. When the vehicle is moving at a faster rate on a highway, the velocity of the wind on top of the vehicle will be high, which can be used to produce electricity. In this work, the possibility of harnessing wind energy on the top of a moving vehicle is proposed. According to the statistics, in India approximately 0.2 million buses & even more number of trucks will be plying on any given day. These vehicles can be used for generation of electricity by using a Wind Energy Conversion System.The vehicle is fitted with a chamber for airflow, chamber is further divided into channels. Each channel has a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) coupled to a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator (PMSG), generating electricity and charging the battery bank. This stored energy can be used to run local loads such as the Air conditioner, instantaneously improving the fuel economy of the vehicle in turn reducing the carbon emission. For a non air conditioned vehicle, upon reaching the destination energy stored in the battery bank can be converted to AC and fed to the grid or can be used to run an e-scooter as plug & play battery thus promoting the use of e-vehicles.