Solar micro-energy harvesting with pyroelectric effect and wind flow

This article proposes to harvest solar micro-energy using the pyroelectric effect and low wind flow. The basic concept was presented and validated by laboratory experiments with controlled airflow. The measured temperature variation, subject to the intensity of radiation and wind speed in the environment was demonstrated to reach 16 °C. The time variation of temperature was 0.53 °C s−1 with the speed of airflow at 2 ms−1. The power density with PZT as the pyroelectric material was 4.2 μW cm−3 in laboratory conditions. Both the thermodynamic model and electric model of the pyroelectric generator were established, and a numerical procedure was developed to predict the system performance which was proven to be reliable. The characteristics of such an energy harvesting system were analyzed in detail by simulation, and the results indicated that the proposed idea is promising.