2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

Development of Energy Harvesting Using Speed

Breaker
H. C. Mat Haris, MAN Mohd Nor, M. H. Fazalul Rahiman, NFA Abdul Rahman
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA
40450 Shah Alam, Selangor. MALAYSIA
irharizan@salam.uitm.edu.my, fazehazambri@yahoo.com
hezrif@salam.uitm.edu.my, farahaida@salam.uitm.edu.my

Abstract— Energy can neither be created or be destroyed and
can only be transform from one form to another. Pressure is a
kind of energy that is exerted almost all the time as force and can
be either reused within the same process or transferred to
another process. Force or when it converts into energy is called
potential energy and free of charge energy. Thus, this energy can
reduce the operating cost and can increase the output
productivity. Pressure has large opportunities and stronger
range of force recovery on the road. Therefore, this project
utilizes force created from vehicle hump as an alternative and
new renewable energy source. A model of road speed breaker
which uses power hump technology is used as device to harness
force created from applied pressure from the heavy vehicles
hitting the speed breaker which act as the input. The speed
breaker is used as it can function into two different uses such as
for slowing of road vehicles and hence generating energy by
harnessing applied force into electrical energy. The electrical
energy produced can either be use to power up street lights or
stored in a battery for emergency purposes.
Index Terms— Pressure, Force, Alternative, Renewable
energy, Speed breaker, Power hump technology
I. INTRODUCTION
The number of vehicles on the road increases drastically
over the years. According to the Malaysian Institute of Road
Safety Research 5,849 to 6,872 people have perished annually
on Malaysian roads and highways each year between 2001 and
2010; a relatively high figure considering the country’s
population of only 28 million [1]. Speed breaker or speed
bumpers are the common name for a family of traffic calming
devices that uses vertical deflection to slow down road vehicle
in traffic in order to improve safety condition. In order to meet
the future electricity demand without harming the environment,
it is necessary to focus more on renewable energy and
unconventional sources for electricity generation. Road
vehicles produce potential and kinetic energy from forces of its
weight and speed when impacted with a speed breaker. It does
not only slow down vehicles speed but it also can be used for
power generation with the power hump technique.
Power hump technology consist of electro-mechanical set
up unit that harness wasted potential and kinetic energy to
generate electricity. While moving, the vehicles possess some
kinetic energy and it is being wasted. This kinetic energy can
be utilized to produce power by using a special arrangement
called Power Hump. It is an Electro-mechanical unit. All this
mechanism can be housed under the dome, like speed breaker,
which is called hump. Energy from the impact between the
vehicle and speed breaker will create the power hump. Force of
the power hump will then activate the mechanical parts
movement that is installed in the speed breaker. The
mechanical movement concepts used are the same as the
mechanical parts including rack and pinion, flywheel, flexible
coupling and propeller shaft. The frequent impact on the speed
breaker, vehicle weights and speed contributes to the force for
the power hump in order to activate movement of the
mechanical parts. Force is power and instead of letting it
spared off, it should be harness to a level that can provide an
incredible amount of power. Power hump helps to generates
renewable energy via converting mechanical to electrical
process which is sustainable, clean and pollution free.
The significant of the power hump technique and
technology normally reduces the operating cost by increasing
their power output productivity. Thus, this will increase the
efficiency of the process. Practically, road is being fully and
busily occupied by vehicles almost two third of a day and lots
of forces occurs due to vehicle braking. Therefore, the usage of
occurring excessive force is important to improve the
efficiency of energy use with converting force to produce
electrical energy and then using it can improve the efficiency
of fossil fuel or electricity use. This power hump is reusing the
excessive force from the impact of moving vehicles with the
speed breaker on the road for generating electrical works.
Power hump technique and technology gives benefit indirectly
in reducing the pollution with no electrical noise pollution and
do not use or produce any gases to the environment. Therefore,
these will response to the problem of global warming.
The objectives of this project are:
i. Utilizing excessive force via power hump as an
alternative source of power.
ii. Analyzing mechanical principle as tools for force
harvesting technology.
iii. Applying the power hump technique as energy
generation for road appliances.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Design
The whole systems can be represented by a block diagram
in Fig. 1 where excessive force from the vehicle is captured by

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

the speed breaker as a potential energy which is converted to
mechanical energy through the mechanism of rack and pinion,
propeller shaft and flywheel. The mechanical parts are
attached to an alternator to allow the conversion of mechanical
energy to electrical energy which will then be stored in a
battery.
shaft. Mechanism of rack and pinion was chosen to be used
from a steering rack and is connected to a flexible coupling of
a propeller shaft. The rack and pinion system convert the
rotational motion of the steering wheel or driver input into
linear motion required to turn the tire, and provide gear
reduction or steering ratio, making easier to turn the tire [9].

Fig. 1. Block diagram Fig. 3. Speed bumps

In systems utilizing the power hump technique in Fig. 2,

the main part of the system is the speed breaker panel that is
pushed downwards that act as the power hump whenever a
vehicle passes over it. When the panel is pushed downwards
due to the force from the overpass vehicles, the rack and
pinion mechanism will rotate the coupling of the propeller
shaft. The shaft is also connected to the flywheel which will
act as storage for the rotational energy. The flywheel will use
the rotational energy to generate electricity using an alternator Fig. 4. Steering rack and pinion mechanism
which is connected via belting.
The propeller-shaft mechanism in Fig. 5 consists in using a
flexible coupling mechanism to convert the movement of the
power hump to a rotary movement.

Fig. 5. Propeller-shaft mechanism

Fig. 2. Power hump design

Flywheel systems as in Fig. 6 store kinetic energy such as
energy of mass in motion by constantly spinning a compact
Speed breaker or speed bump as in Fig. 3 is a type if ridge
rotor in a low-friction environment. The flywheel keeps the
that is installed on the road to slow down vehicles and control
rotation of the alternator rotating from the force of the power
traffics. Controlling vehicle speed by using speed bumps is the
hump even when the hump power is slowing down. A
most effective method to improve the safety of the
flywheel kinetic energy stored is proportional to the mass of
surrounding road especially at a parking lot, driveway and
its rotor, the square of its radius, and the square of its
private lanes. Speed breakers are implemented to reduce the
rotational speed (RPM). Flywheel energy storage system
speed of the vehicle near schools, college, hospitals,
(FESS) has also been used in many pilot projects
pedestrian crossing or zebra crossing, toll gate and in some
demonstrating the possibility of its beneficial in electrical
place where over speed is restricted. Normally the speed
railways, such as the tr100kW FESS from Urenco installed in
bumps are constructed either in consecutive black and white
Paris subways [5]. The combination of a flywheel device with
or yellow and white stripes. The dimension of the speed bump
a battery source has several advantages, such as high-peak
varies with respect to the roads [8].
power capacity, high energy density and reduction in the
The steering system in Fig. 4 consists of a rack linked to a
number of charging/discharging cycles in the battery [6].
pinion. The rack and pinion joint is based on one prismatic
Nowadays vehicles, dynamos are being left gradually
joint and one revolute joint. The prismatic joint is for the
and alternators take the turn instead for charging systems.
linear output movement and the revolute joint for the input
Alternator is an electromechanical device which converts

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

mechanical energy into electrical energy. Superior feature

of alternators is that they can be charged on idling epoch and
they have more output current. On the other hand by using
diodes alternative current can be converted into direct current
[7].

Fig. 6. Flywheel

The alternator such in Fig. 7 is an electrical generator that

is composed of rotating magnetic field which converts
mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of
alternating current. When the vehicle passes on the speed
breaker, the translators move downward and generate power
in the stators. The alternator is used in order to produce an
output up to 13 and 14 volts.
Fig. 8. Flowchart of project

III. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

Each of the power humps of the speed breaker will provide
a different rotational speed at the flywheel. The flywheel will
store the rotational energy produced by the power hump and
recorded by using a rig sensor that is installed at the flywheel.
By converting the force from the speed breaker power
hump into rotational energy, an alternator of 13 V to 14 V will
be powered using the speed of the rotational flywheel. Table 1
Fig. 7.: Alternator shows the data of minimum and maximum voltage obtained
from the speed of the rational energy at the flywheel that is
When a car passes over the bump, the rack moves
produced by the alternator.
downward transferring the kinetic energy of the vehicle to the
To test the constructed prototype, a fix amount of force of
pinion and thus to the shaft. Next, the shaft turns the flywheel
26 humps was applied to the speed breaker panel. In the test,
that will cause a rotation for the connected alternator via
the fix amount of force is applied to act as a passing by car is
belting. These shafts are connected through a belt drive to the
applied on the bump and the voltage is measured. The panel
dynamos, which converts the mechanical energy into electrical
will keep being hump to show respectively the rotational
energy. The conversion will be proportional to the traffic
speed and variations of the voltage in function of the force as
density [2]. The alternator rotation will generate electricity
the power hump.
which will then be stored into a battery before inserting it into
an inverter circuit that will then step up into an alternating
TABLE I. SPEED BREAKER POWER HUMP RESULTS
current voltage of 230 V.
No. of No. of Speed Min. Max.
B. Flowchart observation hump (RPM) Voltage Voltage
Fig. 8 shows the flowchart of the project where the (V) (V)
0 0 0 0 0
renewable energy using speed breaker is implemented. In
order to choose the suitable mechanical method to harvest the
1 0-2 110 5.423 6.012
power hump caused by passing by vehicle, rack and pinion
mechanism is the most suitable compared to any other type of
2 3-4 246 6.322 6.936
mechanical movement. This is because rack and pinion has a
high forward and reverse gear movement efficiency.

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia

3 5-6 396 7.320 7.842 remain constant as the rotational speed also reached its
maximum rotational capability at 1091 rpm. This is because
4 7-8 482 8.036 8.412 due to the mechanical condition that has reached its physical
limitation to rotate much faster to provide the alternator in
5 9-10 592 8.531 8.841 order to generate higher output.
6 11-12 702 8.911 9.340

7 13-14 844 9.421 9.603

8 15-16 955 9.833 10.032

9 17-18 972 10.212 10.33

10 19-20 1021 10.366 10.544

11 21-22 1033 10.602 10.711

12 23-24 1080 10.832 10.901

13 25-26 1091 10.903 10.903

Fig. 10. Graph of Voltage and Speed

14 27-28 1091 10.903
The graph in Fig. 9 shows the relationship between the
rotational speed and number of hump. It shows that as the
hump increases the rotational speed of the flywheel also
increases. The continuous power hump of the speed breaker
causes the rotational speed to keep increasing until the 26
hump which is equivalent to 13 vehicles, where the rotational
speed maintained at 1091 rpm and can no longer increases due
to it has reached the flywheel maximum physical rotation
capability.
Speed Vs No. of hump
1500
Speed (RPM)
10.903 The minimum voltage were recorded for the rotational
speed when speed breaker panel returned to its original
position and maximum voltage is recorded when the speed
breaker is experiencing the power hump. That is because
during the speed breaker panel return to its original position, it
experience some mechanical losses due to the rotational is not
as fast as the rotational for when the power hump force is
exerted to the speed breaker panel.
IV. CONCLUSION
The speed breaker is suitable for this country because there
has many road humps in here. By not wasting the excessive
force caused by the road humps, this speed breaker project
will give advantage to the country. The electricity will
produce every minute that any vehicle passes through it.
Based on the results, it shows that with the amount of at least
13 continuous vehicles power hump can produce the

maximum amount of 10V. Together with traffics and speed

1000
500
Speed (RPM)
0 of the road. This country should have new system like this to
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28
No. of hump
Fig. 9. Graph of Speed and Number of Hump
Graph in Fig. 10 shows how the rotational speed of the
flywheel affects the voltage produced by the alternator. The
continuous hump causes the speed to increase and hence the
voltage also increased. The alternator produces higher voltage
when it has higher revolution per minute.
However, the voltage can only be generated only up to
10.903 V using the power hump from the speed breaker
although the alternator can produce up to 13 V to 14 V and it
limit precaution in Malaysia, the amount of vehicles pass
through the speed breaker in a day will exert enough power
humps which is sufficient to power the street lights on the side
saving energy by using the renewable energy. Besides that,
this generating system is using low cost and using non-
conventional energy sources which will help to converse the
conventional energy sources to meet the future demand. There
will no need of manpower during this generating system. It
also will not cause any pollution problem by using this speed
breaker and easy to install it. Therefore, by adopting this
arrangement the future demands of electricity can be
minimized to some extent.
V. RECOMMENDATION
In order to obtained higher generated voltage from the
alternator, high revolution per minute is required. This is
because the relationship between the rotational speed is

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 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control (ICSPC 2016), 16–18 December 2016, Melaka, Malaysia
directly proportional to the voltage generator. Hence, there are
two method that can be apply to maximized the rotational
speed from the power hump in order to obtained high output
voltage.
A. Gear ratio System
Gears usually used in the transmission system are also
called speed reducer, gear head and gear reducer which
consists of a set of gears, shafts and bearings that are factory
mounted in an enclosed lubricated housing [4]. Furthermore,
gear ratio system consists of a pair of gear which is the driver
for the input and driven as in Fig. 11. Furthermore, It helps in
obtaining the desired output speed. To achieve very high
acceleration and maximum speed, the design of the final gear
ratio plays a vital role [3].
The gear ratio system can be used and installed into the
speed breaker design between the shaft and the flywheel to
obtain a higher rotational speed and to reduce the mechanical
loss that occurs. To obtain a higher speed, the ratio of the gear
needed would be from big to small or 1:2 for instance where
the output rotation will be twice the input rotation as shown in
(1). Thus, it will not only can increase the flywheel rotational
speed as shown in (2) but also reduce the output torque.
= = = =1∶2 (1)
( )( )= = (2)
/ Box Gears”, Page (1-5), IET Conference Publication, 2013.
Fig. 11. Gear ratio
B. Flywheel Diameter
The flywheel is the mechanical part that is responsible to
store the kinetic energy which is the rotational energy. In
order to generate higher output voltage by using the alternator,
a higher speed is required. Therefore, by substituting the
57
currently installed flywheel with a larger diameter flywheel,
the revolution per minute of the rotation will tend to increase.
This is due to by improving the diameter, the radius will get
bigger and it will affect the angular speed of the flywheel as in
(3).
∗⫪∗
,ω = = (3)
Besides that, flywheel storage energy is stored in the rotor
in proportion to its rotational inertia, and corresponding to the
square of the angular velocity as in (4). [10]
, = Iω = m(rω ) (4)
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