2014 CRC PhD Student Poster Session
53. A quantitative investigation of building micro-level power management through energy harvesting from occupant mobility Neda Mohammadi (neda@vt.edu), Advisor: Dr. Tanyel Bulbul, Dr. John E. Taylor Virginia Tech Climate change mitigation strategies are targeting carbon pollution reduction by at least 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030. To comply with this end particularly in our residential and commercial sectors, a correlation between the energy efficiency strategies and energy harvesting from emerging renewable energy resources is essential. Due to high reliance on electricity in energy demands, power management plays a significant role in the required interplay between the two strategies. While macroscale energy harvesting technologies such as wind turbines, hydro-electric generators and solar panels are being employed in macro-scale power management by directly feeding the grid; we lack an integrated micro-scale power management system at the building level which relies on energy harvesting from ambient environment. We intend to explore an alternative micro-scale energy harvesting system which can be employed in buildings in support of off the grid micro-level power management. Harvesting, converting, and storing energy from human locomotion through wearable devices have attracted commercial and military attention; but have largely focused on relatively small scale energy conversion for personal devices. In this research, we quantify whether the accumulated energy harvested from building occupants’ mobility can contribute to the electrical demand, and thus offset CO₂ emissions. We conducted a pilot study in which the data from wearable activity tracker devices was monitored to assess the potential available energy which could be transmitted to balance the energy consumption of an office building. Office buildings have high occupant mobility in aggregate which could offset a meaningful portion of building CO₂ emissions. An energy balance analysis incorporating the electrical energy harvested from occupants’ mobility has shown promising results of more than 2 tons of CO₂ emission reduction in one month for the office building under study. This amount in larger scales can potentially offset meaningful portions of disaggregated energy use and its consequential emissions. We offer an exploratory analysis of the potential energy conversion and exchange in a buildingoccupant system which can be produced through energy harvesting of human locomotion. Harvesting energy generated by the human mobility patterns of building occupants may represent an important step forward in instigating a larger renewable energy resource to draw upon, which will also infuse the occupants' network with improved energy consumption behavior.
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