Miniature Wind Energy Harvester Based on Voltage Multipliers

Development of portable wind energy harvester has received limited attention though the energy source is highly available environmentally. In this paper, portable wind energy harvesting circuits based on Cockroft-Walton voltage multipliers and miniature AC generators are presented. The AC to DC wind energy harvesting circuit presented is capable of generating up to 20V DC voltage and powering up to 8 blue LEDs. A new circuit architecture is proposed using self-power inverting op-amp to convert the energy harvester circuit into AC-AC booster. By using 3 stages of voltage doublers to power the op-amp, the circuit is capable of amplifying incoming AC voltage from generator for up to 2.3 times. The functionality of the circuits propsed have been validated by measurements and circuit simulations.