A reliable ultracapacitor based solar energy harvesting system for Wireless Sensor network enabled intelligent buildings

Energy consumption is central to design consideration for Wireless Sensor networks (WSN) whether they are powered by batteries or energy harvesters. Lately an alternative to powering WSNs is being actively studied, which is to convert the ambient energy from the environment into electricity to power the sensor nodes. In this paper we propose a low-power solar energy harvesting for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in intelligent building. The sensor nodes are powered by solar energy harvester instead of alkaline battery. This design eliminates the need to use alkaline batteries to nodes which require frequent replacement from time to time. The Energy harvesting system consists of two key components viz. an energy harvesting unit and an energy storage module. The energy harvesting module consists of an adequate number of solar cells connected in series and parallel to scavenge energy while the energy storage module consists of combination of a set of Ultracapacitors connected along with alkaline batteries which could be used as a back-up energy source. This setup forms a reliable combination which could be future of the energy crisis.