Design and testing of piezoelectric energy harvester for powering wireless sensors of electric line monitoring system

Scavenging electromagnetic and vibration energy from environments is an attractive technique for powering wireless sensors in a wireless sensor network. This paper reports our design and testing results on the electric output performance of a piezoelectric energy harvesting device, which consists of cantilever beams, magnetoelectric (ME) transducers, and permanent magnets. The geometric parameters of the device are based on an optimization design with a targeted resonant frequency of 50 Hz. Experimental results show that an output voltage of 56.1 V and an average power of 0.24 mW are achieved responding to a current of 3 A at 50 Hz. Remarkably, this power is a very encouraging power figure that gives the prospect of being able to power a wide range of wireless sensors in an electric line monitoring system. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3677771]