INVESTIGATION INTO THE POTENTIAL OF ENERGY PRODUCTION FROM VEHICULAR MOTION INDUCED AIR FLOW IN MALAYSIA

Abstract: With the rise in energy consumption and usage by an exploding human population and higher quality of life, it is time to switch to renewable energy sources that have lower impacts on the natural world. Commercial scale wind power has seen tremendous growth in the last two decades and is expected to continue growing. But small-scale wind power still has tremendous potential in creating energy efficient homes micro-grid systems. Through this work, we explore the potential of micro VAWTs installed on highway medians to capture wind energy from moving vehicles. There are 2 main questions intended to be addressed here, namely: Is energy production from vehicular wake losses significant and if significant, how does the produced energy stand in comparison to a household’s consumption as well as an LED streetlight. In order to proceed with this work, we have taken the reference wind measurements performed on highway medians in Malaysia from literature. The right turbine choice for this application has also been contemplated through the literature review and chosen to be a cross-flow VAWT model with experimental results.Using the power curve of the turbine and the extracted wind speed measurements, energy production is estimated and compared to the electricity consumption of a suburban home in Malaysia. Further on, other analyses are performed to better understand the energy production potential of such applications and estimated for varying size in turbine, position of turbine with respect to ground, and the energy generation per kilometer of highway length.