Harvesting energy from vehicle wheels

This paper describes a new method to generate power from a rotating vehicle wheel using a Thundertrade piezoelectric generator. The approach uses centripetal force to generate an impact on the piezoelectric transducer. The device was designed to be mounted on a vehicle rim. A generator with a volume of 2 cm³ produced 4 mW of electrical power at 800 rpm using a test wheel with 0.12 m diameter. Analytical results showed that the same amount of power can be produced by mounting the generator on a vehicle wheel with a diameter of 13 inches and a linear speed of 28.4 miles/h.