DefinePK

Abstract

Recently, concerns on the energy consumption for ultra-low power energy has been rapidly increased. Piezoelectric energy harvester suffers from extremely huge power loss when rectifying the generated AC signal into DC voltage. This paper demonstrates a study on enhancing the efficiency of the interfaced rectifier circuit on Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) piezoelectric element, that is actuated by using just a single impact force from a free-fall experiment. The purposes of this study is to reduce the power losses from this harvester system during rectification in order to increase the efficiency of the extracted output power from piezoelectric. The enhancements have been made based on the factors that affecting the generated output power from the piezoelectric. In this study, the interfacing converters comes from four different types of rectifier circuits that is optimized by varying the level of forward voltage, V_f drop across the diode and the capacity of the filter capacitor, C_f to match the impedances of the harvester. The enhancement of the generated output voltage from the harvester also has been done by altering the mechanical configuration of the set-up to increase the vertical displacement from the impact. The performances of the system have been analyzed and plotted into voltage and power curves. From the experimental results, it shows that the power efficiency of the full-wave bridge rectifier with the lowest power losses across the diode is the highest compared to the other rectifier topologies.