Experimental Study on Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting From Indoor High-Voltage Disconnector

Thermoelectric energy harvesting is a promising power supply technology for low-power sensors installed on the high-voltage side. This article presents an experimental study on harvesting thermoelectric energy from an indoor high-voltage disconnector with commodity thermoelectric generators (TEGs). The main working conditions of the disconnector, including working current, ambient temperature, ambient airflow velocity, and ambient airflow direction, are controlled by an experimental platform, and their effects on the energy harvesting performance of TEG are analyzed in detail. A low-power wireless sensor with an energy management circuit is mounted on the switching blade of the disconnector to investigate the feasibility of TEG energy application. The experimental results show that the harvested power of TEG increases and decreases quadratically with the increasing disconnector current and ambient temperature, respectively. The increasing ambient airflow velocity causes the harvested power to increase first and then decrease. The airflow coming from the front of the disconnector is more conducive for energy harvesting than the airflow coming from the side and back. When the disconnector works under the rated current and standard indoor environmental conditions (20 °C and no airflow), the energy provided by a single TEG with an area of
$90\times30$
mm2 can meet the energy consumption of the low-power wireless sensor working in the intermittent mode. When the disconnector works at a low current, a feasible way to improve the reliability of TEG energy application is changing the indoor environmental conditions, such as decreasing ambient temperature or adjusting airflow velocity and direction.