A Large-Scale On-Road Energy Harvester From Highway Vibration

This paper is to develop a large-scale energy harvester for traffic monitoring systems by using a unique half-wave mechanical motion rectify mechanism. When vehicles pass over the energy harvesting device, the electrical energy can be produced by the mechanical motion even after the vehicle passed by, which solves the difficulty in regeneration energy from impulse vibration. Design approach and dynamics modeling are presented to reveal the working mechanism of the energy conversion. In-field test with a sedan car is carried out and the regenerated power up about 24 Watts can be produced, which is much larger than the existing highway energy harvester in the published literature. This large-scale energy harvesting mechanism using the proposed MMR mechanism can help to develop harvesting device to build up self-power energy source for highway transportation monitoring system.