Photovoltaic (PV) and thermo-electric energy harvesters for charging applications
Graphical abstract
Section snippets
Introduction and review
There has been a growing in interest in energy harvesting technology over the last few years, due in the main to an increased demand requirement for the use of sustainable power supplies in emerging technologies. For example in the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) [1], embedded systems [2], environmental monitoring [3], wireless sensor networks (WSNs), smart cities [4], wearable and portable electronics [5] to name a few. Electrical energy can be obtained via energy harvesting technology from
PV and thermo-electric energy harvesters
To undertake modeling and analysis it is necessary to create a mathematical model that accurately describe the non-linear I–V and P–V characteristics of solar PV module. Many models exhibit the characteristics of solar cells however in apply the commonly utilized models are the single diode equivalent circuit model (SDM), the double diode equivalent circuit model (DDM) and the triple diode equivalent circuit model. The SDM model is considered in this paper due to its simplicity and accuracy in
Experimental set up
In this research we have demonstrated a hybrid energy harvester for charging a mobile phone. Fig. 3 shows the block diagram model of the hybrid energy harvester which consists of two types of energy harvesters including solar PV and thermoelectric, all including the power electronics circuitry. The following section discusses the characteristics and the performance of the solar and thermoelectric energy harvester.
Application overview
The complete experimental setup to charge the smart phone is shown in Fig. 7. It can be seen from the figure that a portable solar module is integrated with DC/DC adjustable converter and CMTP02 3A solar charge controller. The output of the charge controller is connected with the USB buck controller which charges the smart phone Xiaomi Redmi Note 2. The PV output current () and voltage () and, the charge controller output current () and voltage () have been measured as shown in Fig. 8
Conclusions
This paper presented two energy harvesters namely thermoelectric and solar PV and, analysed their performances for charging applications. There is no minimum amount of current requirement to charge a battery, mobile phone or tablet but the voltage should be nearly 4.5 V to 5 V. However, the speed of charging will depend on the current level and it will take longer period to charge it fully if the current level is very low. Charging mobile phone from laptop/computer through the USB2.0 port
CRediT authorship contribution statement
C.R. Saha: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Validation, Investigation, Methodology, Conceptualization. M.N. Huda: Writing - original draft, Data curation. A. Mumtaz: Writing - review & editing. A. Debnath: Formal analysis, Software. S. Thomas: Data curation. R. Jinks: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgements
There was no funding of this work.
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