Many Kinds of Energy Source in Our Surroundings at Home

We are studying the Energy Harvesting in our surroundings at home. Our aim was to supply the energy to the sensor terminal that communicates to other terminals wirelessly (sensor network nodes). The average energy consumption for each terminal is estimated to be around 2.6 mW supposing to be used as Rich HEMS (Home Energy Management System) terminal. In order to get such energy from our surroundings, we have tried to use vibration energy caused by the human step on the floor, the hydroelectric power generation from the water pipe, the ventilation wind at kitchen. As the result we have succeeded in getting much power of 30 mW from the water pipe experiment. Moreover we have tried to use magnetic flux leakage energy from the light bulb driven with inverter. In this measurement we could get the average power of 4 mW. In this paper we will discuss the results for each power generation method.