Harvesting Energy from Pavement – Electromagnetic Approach

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249

^* Corresponding author: mohammadreza.gholikhani@utsa.edu

Abstract

Roadway pavements have a great potential to be a renewable energy source. Because they are continuously subjected to solar radiation and kinetic energy from passing vehicles. In this study, a prototype was developed to harvest passing vehicle kinetic energy by using electromagnetic technology. The prototype was fabricated by mechanical components including top plate, racks, pinions, one-way clutches, shafts, compression springs and generator. The prototype uses deflection generated by passing vehicles and converts it to rotations in shaft that triggers an embedded generator. A performance of the prototype in generating electrical power was evaluated with laboratory tests by using UTM and simulating traffic conditions. The output powers were measured by different magnitudes of the loads, times of loading and times of unloading. The experimental results show promising in generating power by the proposed prototype with a maximum average power of 3.21 mWatt.