System for micro generation and energy storage, state of the art — Example of the piezoelectric effect

摘要

The number of electronic devices has been increasing as well as the features that are offered to the business community, government and individuals. Associated with the increase in the capacity of equipment's in terms of speed and interfaces there is an increase in power consumption. However, not forgetting this, there is a strong focus by the hardware manufacturers to reduce consumption of microprocessors, with several examples in the market with very low power consumption. This advance allows a window of opportunity for many applications that were inaccessible. With the reduction of consumption and a careful selectivity in equipment's peripherals, etc., one can use renewable energy sources with very low production for use in emerging applications. This article illustrates an example of an electric energy production and shows an example in terms of very low power energy production techniques, presenting an application for the electric sector. The main focus will be on an example about piezoelectric energy production used as an education topic. The idea is to capture the energy of the people when walking, using sensors in shoes. Tests were conducted with different types of shoes, to determine the importance of the shoe sole materials. Then, to the same shoe, tests were conducted to study the person riding behavior and various experiences were lead to determine the best position of the sensors in the shoe. Finally, for the same set of sensors in the shoe, different motion profiles were performed to characterize the power production profile. The electronics which could be used, given the energy production values for performing tasks of biomedical instrumentation was then studied. Many examples of using the piezoelectric effect for energy production can be found, for football stadiums, clubs, public buildings, hypermarkets, with examples relating production of 8.400 watts per second. Many new techniques are also been explored like how to harness the body's own energy to power medical devices among others. Installing self-powered sensors in people working in the power electric sector, can be important to detect how they behave. For students in classrooms this is an important technique also, for teachers or for themselves, to detect their emotional state, for example, when dealing with electric machines lab topics or high voltage systems laboratories - the importance is also in a self-powered instrumentation system using micro generation energy [11]-[12].