Enhancing wind energy harvesting using passive turbulence control devices

Abstract

Aiming to predict the performance of galloping piezoelectric energy harvesters, a theoretical model is established and verified by experiments. The relative error between the model and experimental results is 5.3%. In addition, the present model is used to study the AC output characteristics of the piezoelectric energy harvesting system under passive turbulence control (PTC), and the influence of load resistance on the critical wind speed, displacement, and output power under both strong and weak coupling are analyzed from the perspective of electromechanical coupling strength, respectively. The results show that the critical wind speed initially increases and then decreases with increasing load resistance. For weak and critical coupling cases, the output power firstly increases and then decreases with the increase of the load resistance, and reaches the maximum value at the optimal load. For the weak, critical, and strong coupling cases, the critical optimal load is 1.1 MΩ, 1.1 MΩ, and 3.0 MΩ, respectively. Overall, the response mechanism of the presented harvester is revealed.