AC/DC Buck Boost Converter for Wind-Powered Wireless Sensors

In this work, a power management system for the fluttering wind energy harvester FLEHAP is presented and tested. The proposed system uses a low power microcontroller running a simple power management algorithm, and an optimised self-powered circuit consisting of a buck-boost converter and an auxiliary circuit, which is capable of providing enough power for the functionality of the components. The primary goal of the system is to ensure the power delivery capability and self-start-up, while the secondary goal is to provide high power efficiency on the output. This approach gives an advantage over the commercial converters tested on the same harvester in terms of efficiency, as well as programmability and flexibility in the power monitoring and management, allowing the system to be either used with different type of harvesters, or being a part of more advanced power management scheme through the ability of communicating data.