Electricity Generation by Wind Using Resonance and Piezoelectric Effect

Abstract

Faraday's law of Electromagnetic Induction is the working principle behind A.C.-D.C. generators, which contributes a major part of the generated electricity utilized today. However, the Photoelectric Effect used in Solar cells is also a useful source of renewable energy produced from the sun. In this research work, we have tried to generate electricity from the concept of Resonance and Piezoelectric Effect. To achieve the goal, we have used a thin strip of stretch-resistant material which naturally has the property of resisting the applied stretching force. The length of this stretch-resistant material will be set up so that the incoming airflow will make the thin strip vibrate at its resonant frequency. This will create high-amplitude mechanical vibrations on the thin strip. Now, these vibrations will be passed to the piezoelectric material. Piezoelectric materials have the property to exhibit the piezoelectric effect, which will convert the high amplitude mechanical vibrations passed by thin strips to the piezoelectric material into electrical discharge and hence, we generated electricity from wind using Piezoelectric Effect & Resonance. Due to less moving parts in our setup, it is theoretically more efficient in high wind conditions where a windmill usually fails to work. The only moving part is the thin strip which moves in a flapping motion hence, the generator is named a flapping generator. Even though the generated electricity is in a lesser amount, we can create an array of some such setups to increase the output electricity (as we do in solar energy generation) as per our requirement.