Engineering Commons^™

A Miniature Energy Harvesting Device For Wireless Sensors In Electric Power System, Rashed H. Bhuiyan, Roger A. Dougal, Mohammod Ali

Faculty Publications

A novel energy harvesting device called the energy coupler is proposed which can provide power to small wireless sensors in a power system. The energy coupler when coupled electromagnetically to a nearby current carrying conductor scavenges ac power from the conductor. The proposed energy coupler converts the harvested ac power into dc using a passive voltage multiplier circuit. The design of the energy coupler is such that the dc power obtained is adequate to charge a miniature 1.2-V rechargeable battery. It is demonstrated that the energy coupler is capable of delivering 10 mW of dc power to a 50-Ω load. …

Near Real-Time Exercise Machine Power Statistics Reporting, Brendan C. Asche

Master's Theses

Cal Poly’s Recreation Center expansion project provides an opportunity to implement Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines (EHFEM). Part of this implementation is a system that reports the exercise machines’ energy production. Although products capable of reporting exercise machine energy harvesting statistics exist, they have limited capabilities. This thesis project defends a system capable of reporting exercise machine power statistics in near real-time.

The system consists of display, database, and power measurement modules. The display module presents statistics in an interactive, graphical, and widely-accessible way. The database module provides an efficient way of organizing and accessing stored statistics. Multiple power measurement …

Near Infrared Photovoltaic Micro-Cell For Optical Fibre Based Power Harvesting, Gary Allwood

Theses : Honours

A photonic power system using a silicon or germanium based device as a photonic power converter was proposed. The properties of each device were investigated to determine the optimum structure, design, configuration and efficiency for power conversion. These included, but were not limited to, device geometry, doping concentration and the wavelength of the incident beam. Relevant inferences were made from the results obtained and compared to previous work. Currently, research into photovoltaic power converters is focused on the efficiencies of complex heterostuctures made from gallium-arsenide compounds. Here, the properties of a silicon device were investigated in detail as the predicted …