An Energy-Harvesting System Using MPPT at Shock Absorber for Electric Vehicles

Abstract

This paper investigates an energy-harvesting system that uses of vibration energy at a shock absorber for electric vehicles. This system mainly comprises a linear electromagnetic generator and synchronous buck converter. To obtain the electrical energy through a linear electromagnetic generator, the perturb and observe maximum power point tracking (P&O MPPT) scheme is applied at the converter. The power converter circuit is designed with a diode rectifier and synchronous buck converter. The generated electric power is able to transmit to the battery and the damping force of the shock absorber is adjusted by the controlled current of generator. The linear electromagnetic generator was designed as a single phase eight-slot eight-pole tubular permanent magnet machine. The performance of the proposed energy-harvesting system was verified through simulations and experiments.

Keywords

• energy harvesting
• electric vehicle
• power converter
• linear electromagnetic generator
• maximum power point tracking