Energy Harvesting from Road Infrastructure Using An Innovative Electromagnetic System: A Conception Study

The growing demand for clean energy has forced the scientific community to explore the potential of energy harvesting from road infrastructures. The otherwise dissipated energy when a vehicle passes over a speed bump can be harvested and used to source traffic lights, passive sensors, traffic signals, and highway communication systems. Electromagnetic energy harvesters (EMEH) have a higher energy output than other techniques such as Piezo, pneumatic, and Hydraulics. The ongoing research on EMEH devices suffers from high energy losses, low performance, neglecting driver's comfort, and being less durable. The current study concerns improving electromagnetic energy harvesters’ performance, durability, compatibility, and efficiency. A robust rectified motion EMEH machine has been designed that can transform 3mm of vertical deflection to 69mm at the output. An instantaneous power of 91 W is calculated using mathematical modeling of the system.