Inductive Power Line Harvester With Flux Guidance for Self-Powered Sensors

Self-powered sensors are expected to enable new large-scale deployment and location access capabilities for sensor systems. Energy-harvesting devices have been shown to provide adequate power densities, but their dependence on very specific environmental conditions restricts their applicability. Energy harvesting from power line infrastructure offers an architecture for addressing this challenge because such infrastructure is widely available. In this article, an inductive power line harvester concept is presented based on a flux concentration approach adapted to a closed-loop core geometry. Flux concentration is studied by simulation, showing a 26% flux increase using a 1:3 geometrical concentration ratio in a closed-loop core. A 20 x 20 x 25 mm prototype with a U- shaped soft-core sheet and a 200-turn Cu coil around a 5-mm-diameter, 20-mm-long softcore rod is introduced. The total device volume is 9.1 cm(3). Characterization results on a power line evaluation setup for currents up to 35-A rms and a 50-Hz-1-kHz range are presented. Power between 2.2 mW (50 Hz) and 233 mW (1 kHz) is demonstrated on an ohmic load, from a 10-A rms power line current, employing impedance matching with reactance cancellation. The corresponding power densities are 0.24 and 25 mW/cm(3) per total device volume. This performance is adequate for enabling self-powered wireless sensor networks installed along power distribution lines.