Work

Three-Phase Powerline Energy Harvesting Circuit with Maximum Power Point Tracking and Cold Start-Up

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This paper presents a three-phase powerline energy harvesting circuit with doubly regulated output voltages to power wireless sensors for monitoring of railroad powerline status. Three ring-shaped silicon steel cores coupled to the three phases of a powerline convert the line current into three-phase voltages, which are applied to an energy harvesting circuit. The key parts of the circuit are a series three-phase voltage rectifier, a buck-boost converter operating in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM), and a microcontroller unit (MCU) for maximum power point tracking (MPPT). The MCU performs a two-step, coarse and fine, MPPT for impedance matching based on the perturb and observe method. Two parallel voltage regulators deliver 5 V and 5.7 V regulated DC voltages to power a radio and a set of sensors, respectively. The energy harvesting circuit is prototyped using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components on an FR4 PCB. The measured maximum efficiency is 84% of the three-phase voltage rectifier and 89% for the buck-boost converter under the powerline current ranging from 5 A to 20 A.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app152211954

Authors: Fariborz Lohrabi Pour, Seong Kwang Hong, Jaeyun Lee, Meysam Sohani Darban, Jaehoon Matthias Kim, Dong Sam Ha

Institutions: University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Korea Railroad Research Institute, Virginia Tech

Language: English

Topic: Innovative Energy Harvesting Technologies

Subfield: Mechanical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Affordable and clean energy

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896