Design of a small scale wind energy harvester using piezo-electric cantilever generator for wireless flame sensor

This paper presents a wind energy harvester that uses piezo-electric cantilevers to power a wireless flame sensor. The wind energy harvester used the force applied by the propeller to the cantilever every time enough wind speed is present in the environment. The cantilever then produced a voltage to charge a battery. The rechargeable battery was used to power up wireless flame sensor. In the course of a cursory exploration, the sufficient number determined was four cantilevers, which generated an average voltage of 5.60 enough to charge a 5-V battery. The study observed that the harvester required a minimum wind speed of about 5 m/s and propeller speed of 1,200 rpm to generate a maximum voltage. Beyond these minimum values, no appreciable increase in the voltage output of the harvester obtained. In the study of the charging and discharging time of the battery, the result showed that it took 1.20 hours to charge the battery for a 4-cantilever harvester. Running the data in MATLAB®, the voltage build-up in the battery with respect to time was characterized as v(t) = 0.337t + 1.7581. Using a standby wireless flame sensor, it took 552 hours to drain the battery.