Power-Efficient Hybrid Energy Storage System for Seismic Nodes

Recent surveys in the energy harvesting system for seismic nodes show that, most often, a single energy source energizes the seismic system and fails most frequently. The major concern is the limited lifecycle of battery and high routine cost. Simplicity and inexperience have caused intermittent undersizing or oversizing of the system. Optimizing solar cell constraints is required. The hybridization of the lead-acid battery and supercapacitor enables the stress on the battery to lessen and increases the lifetime. An artificial neural network model is implemented to resolve the rapid input variations across the photovoltaic module. The best performance was attained at the epoch of 117 and the mean square error of 1.1176e-6 with regression values of training, test, and validation at 0.99647, 0.99724, and 0.99534, respectively. The paper presents simulations of Nsukka seismic node as a case study and to deepen the understanding of the system. The significant contributions of the study are (1) identification of the considerations of the PV system at a typical remote seismic node through energy transducer and storage modelling, (2) optimal sizing of PV module and lead-acid battery, and, lastly, (3) hybridization of the energy storage systems (the battery and supercapacitor) to enable the energy harvesting system to maximize the available ambient irradiance. The results show the neural network model delivered efficient power with duty cycles across the converter and relatively less complexities, while the supercapacitor complemented the lead-acid battery and delivered an overall efficiency of about 75%.