Suppose an energy harvester moving in parallel near to transfer power lines (to profit from the electromagnetic field induced around those lines). In such a case, what is the expected influence of the harvester speed on the collected energy? Is there any relationship between them?
Hi Abdullatif Baba ,
there are two aspects:
On the physical side, I guess the best place to collect energy is midways between the pylons because there the wires are nearest to the surface of the earth (and the pylons don't interfere). So, the optimum would be to reach such a midpoint, and to stop there. Otherwise, the amplitude of the input will be modulated, and the frequency of the modulating signal (= frequency of passing pylons) depends on the speed.
On the legal side, the harvester has to move so fast that it cannot be catched, neither by the workers maintaining the power line nor by the police. :-)
The gist of energy harvesting is to collect energy which would be "wasted" otherwise. But your energy harvester would react on the power lines. So in principle, if you harvest 10 Wh, the power plant driving the power line has to provide 10 Wh more than without the harvesting.
If this is an official project, e. g. to collect energy in a train moving parallel to power lines, then there had to be a contract with the power plant owner, and an energy meter had to be used. But I feel this would run under the heading "Wireless energy transmission" rather than "Energy harvesting".
Joerg Fricke Thank you so much for your answer. You are right, it is a Wireless energy harvesting-based project, it is a legal project, don't worry. We are now in the study phase. But the question here: is there any "linear or nonlinear relationship" between the quantity of the harvested energy and the speed of the harvester along the power lines.
Hi Abdullatif Baba ,
if, for the sake of simplicity, we imagine a straight power line and for example a coil moving at constant distance from the line, then the quantity of collected energy would increase if the frequency of the EM field at the location of the coil increases.
But at 50 Hz, the wavelength in air is about 6000 km. So, in order to increase the frequency to 51 Hz, the coil had to move with a speed of 6000 km/s = 1/50 speed of light.
In short, I don't think that any realistically attainable speed has an influence on the result.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Physical Sciences
- Electromagnetics
- Electromagnetic Fields