Design of Self-Sustainable Street Lamp using Solar-Wind Hybrid Energy System

Abstract

As we are moving towards a future where the basic resources required to generate electricity (non-renewable energy sources) are getting depleted; we will face shortage of power and thus, we are focusing towards creating self-sustainable energy devices. The current street lamp makes use of solar and an external power source for its operation. This external power source is nothing but the city’s power grid from which the street lamps draw power. This is the maximum source of its power. Solar energy provides very minimal amount of power supply which is not sufficient to self-sustainability of the street lamps. In order to overcome this issue and make the street lamps completely self-sustainable, we have come up with this concept of energy harvesting smart street lamps, which makes use of wind energy along with solar energy to power up the street lamps the entire night. The objective of this project is to make an energy efficient smart street lamp which makes use of available renewable sources of energy to generate electrical power. It makes use of 6 vertical axis wind turbine around the street lamp pole to tap into wind energy. The pole is also integrated with 2 solar panels to tap into solar energy. It also involves design and simulation of a multi-input charge controller to accommodate power inputs from multiple wind turbines and solar panels simultaneously. The energy will finally be stored in a battery through which the street lamps can be charged.