A zigzag piezoelectric vibration energy harvester with enhanced power output for self-powered monitoring of transformer substation

A zigzag piezoelectric piezoelectric vibration energy harvester was proposed. The harvester consists of vertically arranged zigzag beams with multiple piezoelectric transducers integrated. Analysis demonstrate the proposed design can effectively reduce the equivalent mass of the system and thereby increase the resonant frequency to the operational frequency of the transformer substations. Besides, integration of multiple piezoelectric transducers has largely boost the power outputs. A fully functional wireless sensor node was designed for the validation of self-powered sensing for transformer substation.