A micro-power generation from rain shower utilizing PZT and PVDT piezoelectric transducer

As the fossil resources are at risk of extinction, many efforts are being introduced to produce electrical energy. Micro-electrification by utilizing the energy from vibration has become an alternative way to generate electricity. It is through a device with sub-micron-scale dimension sub-micron-scale dimension. This work focus to generate electricity with the utilization of the off-the-shelf piezoelectric transducers; Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) and Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) under different rain shower density. With the three different flow rate of an artificial rain shower, it is able to generate maximum power of 2.4x10-6Watt and 27x10-6Watt for PVDF and PZT, respectively. However, the energy is significantly influenced by the rectifier circuit. This paper presents the performance of the power generation from raindrop using piezoelectric transducers available in the open market

PID-based temperature control device for electric kettle

A normal electric kettle usually is intended to boil water until boiling point and cannot be controlled. Most of the kettle does not provide the temperature display for user to track the current temperature reading. Thus, this project is inspired from the shortcoming of most kettles that are sold at the market. By using Arduino microcontroller, a device is developed to control water temperature inside electric kettle. To provide automated temperature control, PID controller is chosen since it can provides precise water temperature control with less fluctuation. The device is also equipped with the display of the current water temperature and desired temperature. The device is tested to an electric kettle and the performance of PID controller in controlling water temperature is compared to on-off controller. An analysis is performed based on the amount of fluctuation with respect to desired temperature to verify the efficacy of the designed circuit and controller. It is found that the developed device and PID controller are capable to control the water temperature inside kettle based on the desired temperature set by user with less amount of fluctuatio

Development of solar panel cleaning robot using Arduino

Solar power is mainly harnessed from photovoltaic (PV) panels which are arranged in multiple arrays in a solar farm or solar system. Though, power generation from PV solar system is characterised by uncertain efficiency, many countries with high insolation prefer solar as an alternative way of generating clean energy. However, the efficiency of energy generated from PV panels is affected by the accumulation of dust and debris, even on one panel in an array. This condition leads to the need for regular cleaning of the surface of PV panels. Current labour-based cleaning methods for photovoltaic arrays are costly in time, water and energy usage as well as lacking in automation capabilities. To overcome this problem, a fully automatic solar panel cleaning system with/without water is proposed. Hence, in this paper, the design of a robot for automated cleaning of the surface of PV panel is presented. The design utilizes an Arduino controller system to control the robot movement during the cleaning process. In addition, it is equipped with two rough sponge and a water pump system that can be used to clean dust or debris found on PV panel surfaces. The efficiency of the PV panels before and after the cleaning process is also observed. The result shows that the developed solar panel cleaning robot is able to clean the panel effectively and increase back the output current as well as the maximum power of the panel by 50%, after the dust on the PV panel is cleane

A Study On The Potential Of Peltier In Generating Electricity Using Heat Loss At Engine And Exhaust Vehicle

In the era of globalization, the electrical energy supply is the main priority in order to do our jobs and daily activities.Unfortunately,limited power supply for the electrical energy usage makes it hard to continuously provide electrical energy for 24 hours.By using Peltier device,it is possible to develop a portable generating system using heat loss in machines and vehicles.The generating system theoretically can harness the heat loss to produce additional electricity for other usage. The objective of the generating system is to study on the potential of Peltier device to generate useful electricity for additional power supply using heat loss. This generating system can be applied on many types of machines and other type of mechanism such as vehicle that release heat loss.In this project,the generating system is evaluated based on the magnitude of voltage output, and it is found that the system shows higher efficiency at 12.59% by using the proposed heat sink