Wind-Generated Electrical Energy Using Flexible Piezoelectric Mateials

Abstract

Electrical energy can be harvested from the wind using flag-like membranes (termed piezoelements or bimorphs) composed of flexible piezoelectric materials. The flapping of the membrane caused by the wind induces bending stresses that generate a voltage across electrodes positioned on the surfaces of the material via the piezoelectric properties of the material. The best results to date using PVDF (polyvinyledene fluoride) as the piezoelectric material are 10 mW of dc power (50 Vdc across 250 kΩ) obtained from a single bimorph element (size about 8"X11"X 0.02") flapping a frequency of 5 Hz in a wind speed of 15 mph. The overall efficiency was low (estimated at 0.1%) and to improve this figure..