Energy Harvesting Opportunities in Vehicles

Attend Energy Harvesting & Storage / Wireless Sensor Networks / Supercapacitors USA, in Washington, DC on 7-8 November to learn the latest developments in this field, do business with every stage of this fast emerging value chain, and enter new market segments.

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Of course, autonomous underwater vehicles, indoor forklifts, power chairs and scooters for the disabled at well over one million yearly, electric bicycles at over 30 million yearly and 150,000 golf cars every year have been pure electric for decades. We must add electric aircraft, even helicopters, now. Here we have a rapidly-growing pure electric vehicle industry of tens of billions of dollars despite the disaster that is pure electric, on-road cars.

All of this will benefit with the plethora of energy harvesting technologies now proving viable. For example, several companies have demonstrated that energy harvesting shock absorbers in a bus or truck can generate over ten kilowatts without even going over rough terrain. Levant Power will offer them as drop- in additions to regular shock absorbers so there is no need for the vehicle to be born electric, something holding up some other advances.

The German car companies are collaborating to standardise on one form of inductive, contactless charging of their up-market models. Surveys show that women, in particular, dislike getting out of a vehicle to refuel and this is the solution. Indeed fast inductive charging is newly becoming possible, and an on-board fast- charging inverter, accepting regular AC power, was announced recently.

Photovoltaics has been a disappointment with a mere 100 watts peak available from a typical solar roof on a car. Pro-rata, the same problem has applied to buses because the 1000 watts of their panels is still nearly useless for much more than a cooling fan when parked and not usually cost-effective. Nevertheless, we now have a clear road map to solar vehicles that are really useful, mimicking the Boeing project to make an unmanned surveillance aircraft that stays up for five years on nothing more than sunshine. For instance, the bendable amorphous silicon, Dye Sensitised Solar Cells DSSC and copper indium gallium diselenide CIGS photovoltaics is a step in the right direction but still near-useless beyond aircraft wings because most vehicles curve in three dimensions. Indeed, their efficiency has been poor: there is no point in having a large solar panel across your vehicle if it only gives the amount of electricity of a small crystalline silicon one, useful as those are for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (UAVs) that surface to gain power then go on their way. The good news is that truly flexible, even stretchable solar panels are on the way, some of them transparent or translucent and some of them converting infra-red and even ultra-violet into useful electricity not just grabbing light. Much more attention is being given to energy harvesting while the vehicle is stationary, using barrel windmills, unfolding solar panels and more. We are finally learning from the lizard that stretching out to catch the sun before starting her day.

Another form of energy harvesting is the generator that catches braking energy. This is also seeing radical change, so the sea-going family boat has its propeller go backwards when sailing or when moored in a tide, recharging the battery so no polluting, noisy, smelly diesel has to be started when it is becalmed or moored.

Wave power for signal buoys and AUVs is in the same family of electrodynamic harvesting technology. You can even buy a pure electric plane that electrodynamically grabs power when soaring or a super yacht that scoops water through a large turbine when under sail; even generates electricity from the torture machines in its gymnasium.

That generator is also subject to change - by vanishing. Modern electric traction motors work in reverse to generate electricity, whether they are synchronous or asynchronous and despite the gradual elimination of expensive rare earth magnets in the former. The bottom line is that energy harvesting, even including piezoelectrics for autonomous instrumentation and thermoelectics on engines, will make hybrid and pure electric vehicles an even greater success. Sometimes it is used in the more sophisticated stop-start systems for conventional vehicles - that arrangement where the vehicle automatically switches off when stationary even briefly. The lead-acid batteries currently used in most of these, fail to work properly with frequent stop-start or low temperature so they are starting to be replaced with lithium-ion batteries or supercapacitors. These are more expensive but they open up more possibilities including grabbing enough energy to assist in traction. Even flywheels capturing energy have become viable in large trucks: indeed they are now being trialled in Volvo cars, a long way from the Formula One Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) where they first had commercial success.

We have moved on from curiosities like tiny military surveillance birds held aloft by lasers. Energy harvesting will even play a major part in resolving the disaster that is pure electric cars with only tens of thousands sold yearly. By the end of the decade they will be affordable, reliable in hot and cold weather and have that 300 miles (480 km) range that will make us all want to buy them. Savvy vehicle designers now think of incorporating at least four types of energy harvesting in their increasingly wireless vehicles. Increasingly, energy harvesting and other components in vehicles, land, water and air, will be integrated, even forming structural components - shaped parts of the vehicle structure - and then smart skin.

To keep up with the blistering pace of change we recommend the latest reports with forecasts from IDTechEx www.IDTechEx.com/Research and the event in Washington, DC, 7-8 November called Energy Harvesting & Storage USA with its co-located event on the closely allied topics of Wireless Sensor Networks & RTLS (modern vehicles employ more and more sensors that need electricity). Also alongside is Supercapacitors USA, also involving those vehicle opportunities. Presenting at these events are the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Energy, Bombardier and Sinautec.