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As the greenhouse effect becomes increasingly serious, cooling a vehicle cabin parked under the blazing sun without running the engine or using an electric vehicle’s power has received considerable attention. In this paper, we develop a novel portable, renewable, solar energy-powered cooling system with wireless power transfer (WPT) and supercapacitors to cool the vehicle cabin. The proposed system consists of a solar collector mechanism, an energy conduit, and a temperature control and cooling module. First, consisting of folding solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, the solar collector mechanism making the proposed system portable. Once collected, the solar energy is converted into electricity and stored in the supercapacitors through wireless power transfer without breaching the vehicle body. Automatic temperature regulation is achieved with the cooling device via the temperature control and cooling module. The experimental results indicate that a maximum output power of 2.181 W and a maximum WPT efficiency of 60.3% are achieved when the prototype loaded with 3 Ω and 5 Ω respectively. Meanwhile, the simulation shows the temperature inside the cabin is reduced by as much as 4.2 °C in average, demonstrating that the proposed solar energy-powered cooling system is effective and feasible in cooling a hot vehicle cabin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy source of vehicles is changing rapidly and significantly in recent years with the increase in renewable energy technologies especially in the case of electric vehicles (EVs). A smart solution has emerged in which the wasted energy in a vehicle’s shock absorber is converted to an alternative energy for the cars themselves, and this is called an energy regenerative shock absorber. Whereas existing regenerative shock absorbers mainly focus on the methods of energy harvesting, there is no such regenerative shock absorber for use in extended range EVs. In this paper, we present a novel high-efficiency energy regenerative shock absorber using supercapacitors that is applied to extend the battery endurance of an EV. A renewable energy application scheme using regenerative shock absorbers for range extended EVs is designed and proposed for the first time. This system collects the wasted suspension power from the moving vehicle by replacing the conventional shock absorbers as these energies are normally dissipated through friction and heat. The proposed system consists of four main components: the vibration of the suspension input module, transmission module, generator module and power storage module. The suspension vibration induced by the road roughness acts as the system excitation to the energy regenerative shock absorber. The vibration is then transmitted through the mechanical transmission module, which changes bidirectional vibration into unidirectional rotation based on gears and a rack to drive the generator module. The power storage module stores the regenerative energy of the shock absorber in the supercapacitor, which is applied to the EV to improve the cruising mileage. Higher efficiency up to 54.98% at most and 44.24% on average were achieved in the simulation and bench tests is proof that the energy regenerative shock absorber is beneficial and promising in generating energy used for renewable energy applications in extended range EVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to reduce energy consumption and electricity expense is the primary driving force behind generating renewable energy for the operation and maintenance of road tunnels. Existing kinetic energy harvesting solutions, such as piezoelectric or mechanical energy harvesting systems, failed to meet the relatively high power demand of road tunnels. Traditional piezoelectric methods only supply micro-electromechanical systems. Their low voltage leads piezoelectric methods to not be applicable in realistic facilities. Due to the transmission loss of energy in a mechanical motion rectifier, mechanical schemes also fail to promote the practical application of renewable kinetic energy harvesting. In this paper, we present a novel high-voltage kinetic energy harvesting system that is installed at the entrance and exit of a road tunnel. It harvests power wasted by vehicles passing over the harvester. The proposed system consists of four main steps: a speed bump and suspension, generator and power storage modules. Acting as the energy input, the speed bump module harvests kinetic energy created by running vehicles. The suspension module resets the speed bump by driving it upwards after vehicles depart from it. Meanwhile, the generator module generates electricity from the kinetic energy collected by the speed bump module. The power storage module rectifies the current and then stores the electrical energy in batteries. The high voltage obtained in the simulation and field tests is a proof that the retrofit mechanism of the energy harvesting system is beneficial and practical in generating energy for use in renewable road tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]