Smart highways: Harvesting electricity using speeding vehicles

Abstract

This study deals with harvesting electricity using speeding vehicles and thus making facilitating towards smart highways. Considering the shortage of electricity and current rate of over exhaustion of fossil fuels, renewable resources need to be used efficiently to meet the current needs and future demands. The model proposed consists of a turbine which is attached to a generator which will further converts kinetic mechanical energy to electrical energy. There are various new mechanical designs and materials proposed for the turbine which will reduce the cost with the same efficiency. There is a safety circuit which will prevent any damage caused by certain voltage fluctuations and bidirectional rotor motion. This is further connected to a charging circuit and Arduino current sensor and Arduino voltage sensor which works on voltage divider rule. NodeMCU is used to log and store data on ThingSpeak API. This helps us in keeping a tab of certain parameters like current, voltage etc which can be used to charge a battery and transmit it to nearby villages, provide charging hubs on the highways and act as charging stations for electrically powered cars.