Sustainable E-mobility Transportation Feasibility Study for Integrated Solar Roads with Wireless Charging and Applicability of Vortex Bladeless for Smart Grids Community.

Written by Adel El-Shahat

One of the biggest challenges that is facing modern transportation now, and in the future, is to completely transition to sustainable e-mobility. So, this research targets to develop a feasibility study and a prototype implementation of solar roads with wireless charging capabilities and to investigate the use of small-scale vortex bladeless turbines along the roads. Because there is an essential need for such viability research to incorporate wireless power transfer technology with solar roadways and investigate the influence of magnetic fields to alleviate the related matters, mainly the lessening in mutual coupling owing to eddy currents produced in the back part piece of the solar cell. Additionally, reducing the cost of the wireless power charging pad materials, and optimal solar power generation. Consequently, various coils and materials have to be researched to reduce losses, identify charging pads thermal and power density boundaries, investigate cooling issues, and build efficient layouts/ systems. To satisfy these needs, solar roadways equipped with inductive wireless systems will be investigated and implemented via developing magnetic field allocation models and studying their effects on solar roadways to help the current, and future roads designers.

Moreover, developing sustainable energy sources has become a global priority and solar energy is one of the more mature of these, having been developed and implemented for several decades. It is expected that market demand, as well as improvements in the technology, will make solar power generation more competitive, effective, and efficient when combining PV panels and roadways with a non-reflective film coating applied to address the problem of reduced electricity generation. Several states and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have conducted studies to encourage the use of renewable energy technologies, including solar, with PV panels representing one of the most popular options. Therefore, one of the main objectives of this research is to conduct an innovative cost-effective development of solar power generation systems embedded in solar roads.

Another sustainable option that will be investigated is to utilize innovative bladeless wind turbines along with the PV generation to help increase power generation with any amount of wind to advance the e-mobility transition process in Indiana. Bladeless turbines work on the base of using mechanical resonance to extract the wind energy, referred to as wind-vortex technology. The turbine is oscillating to capture the wind energy instead of the traditional rotational movement of the turbine based on the Kármán vortex concept. Finally, the successful cases are not limited to these outcomes, but also this technology is utilized in real-life and has shown its applicability in other countries.

Accordingly, our proposed solution will consider intensely advancing various e-mobility transportation issues such as customer service, safety, mobility, sustainability, workforce, and economic competitiveness via modern approaches of innovation & technology [1-5].

 

Research Approach

The proposed research targets the following:

• Propose 3-D electromagnetic, and thermal simulation models to illustrate the magnetic field allocation, and effects of incorporating solar roads with wireless power technology, and energy density.
• Develop feasible practices, and analysis to alleviate the technical obstacles due to solar cells' power range, wireless magnetic field rerouting, and vortex bladeless wind turbines for e-mobility.
• Design, and optimize the proposed sustainable system including solar road, control schemes, and wireless technology based on multi-objective techno-economic function.
• Design and concurrently build and implement all the proposed real-experimental systems and models with their associated design procedures.

 

Methodology and Implementation

The research team will handle the following tasks:

Task-1

A literature review on solar power generation, the various operational options, operation optimization, and design of both the PV panels and the integrated structures to maximize the efficiency and the energy generated under variable constraints in typical roadway structures. Then, create 3-D ANSYS electromagnetic simulation models to illustrate the magnetic field allocation, and effects through incorporating solar lanes with wireless power technology including related losses and lessening in coupling. Develop thermal modeling for the proposed technology to identify the energy density constraints for the solar roads, and wireless charging.

Task-2

Propose feasible practices to alleviate the obstacles that arise from a decrease in component solar cell range, variation in back contact matter, and magnetic field rerouting to quantify the most excellent, more economical, and safety practices for the proposed integration by optimizing efficiency, cost, lifetime, field coupling and material mass. Then, develop technical viability study, and analysis to investigate the pertinency of vortex bladeless wind turbine aligned with roadways for e-mobility by utilizing several parameters such as cost, output power, placement, technical resonant approaches, operating circumstances, sustainability, advantages over current wind turbine, fabrication, carbon footprint decrease, and efficiency.

Task-3

Design, and optimize the proposed sustainable system including solar road, control schemes, and wireless technology based on multi-objective techno-economic context comprising thermal-3D FEM, electromagnetic, and consolidated parameter modeling, along with coil shapes comparison, solar unit size, storage devices, different power electronic converter topologies, cost, stochastic driving cycle, cooling, traffic scenarios of various Indiana roadways, spacing, sensitivity analysis, present photovoltaic material, optimized coil structures, battery size reduction, efficiency, and battery life extension to build experimental validation prototypes.

Task-4

Build/ implement a lab-scale-experimental prototype for validation purposes under various scenarios to detect its reliability, and efficiency.

 

References:

1. United Nations. Sustainable transport, sustainable development. Interagency report for Second Global Sustainable Transport Conference. 2021.
2. A. El-Shahat, S. Thomas, A. Lawson, M. Moore, “Magnetic Induction Wireless Power Transfer in Solar Roads for Electric Vehicles (Experimental Case Project)”, the 9th International Renewable and Sustainable Energy Conference, 23 - 27 November 2021.
3. A. El-Shahat, E. Ayisire, “Novel Electrical Modeling, Design and Comparative Control Techniques for Wireless Electric Vehicle Battery Charging,” Electronics, vol. 10, no. 22, p. 2842, Nov. 2021.
4. A. El-Shahat, M. Hasan, Y. Wu, “Vortex Bladeless Wind Generator for Nano-grids”, 2018 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference, California, USA – October 18 – 21, 2018. [5] A. El-Shahat, R. Haddad, D. Keys, L. Ajala, “Bladeless Wind Turbine (Case Study)”, IEEE SoutheastCon 2019, Alabama, USA, April 11 – 14, 2019.

 

 

This article was edited by Jose Medina.

To view all articles in this issue, please go to April 2022 eBulletin. For a downloadable copy, please visit the IEEE Smart Grid Resource Center.