Self-powered Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for bicycle

For several years, various electric accessories can be installed on bicycles like on-board computer, communication devices, or even wireless sensor nodes. Powering theme from ambient energy could avoid the use of batteries and improve the availability of these devices when the bicycle is not used for a long time. This paper reports on vibration resources detected in a bicycle as a potential energy source for supplying these on-board devices. The measurements showed that the bandwidth of the energy vibration is reduced with speed and that the vibrations at any location in the bicycle are nevertheless sufficient for useful vibration harvesting. For this application, a piezoe-lectric vibration harvester was designed and equipped with a voltage switching interface circuit. In the field test, it is demonstrated that sufficient energy is harvested.