Design, Control and Implementation of Energy Harvester Interface for Net Zero Energy Building Environment

Integration of renewable energy sources in addition with battery energy storage is an inevitable requirement in Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) environment. In order to implement the NZEB concept, it is assumed that the existing energy demand of the buildings will be met through the contribution of renewable energy sources to approach the Net Zero Energy balance [1]. To achieve this, cluster of Energy Harvester Interface module needs to be incorporated to ensure balancing of supply and load demand based on the hierarchy operation of renewable energy sources, battery energy storage and distribution grid. An Energy Harvester Interface is an integral component in achieving NZEB concept and it is required to meet the technical challenges:(l) Design and optimization challenges (2) Reduction of circuit parasitic to suppress voltage spikes across switching devices (3) Converter startup issues (4) High frequency magnetics (5) Higher power density. This paper is focused to address the above mentioned issues and targeted to develop, implement and compare under various circuit configurations.