Viabilidade técnica e econômica de microusinas piezoelétricas em centros urbanos com grande circulação de pedestres

Abstract

The production of energy from so-called clean sources is currently highlighted as one of the main concerns in different economic sectors. Among the forms of clean energy there is a still little explored one that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy, using piezoelectric materials. This type of production can benefit from the intense flow of pedestrians in urban centers of large cities through plates containing piezoelectric cells, installed on sidewalks. However, it is necessary to offer mechanisms that allow analyzing the technical and economic feasibility of this generation category. Therefore, a computational tool that automates the counting of pedestrians in the supposed locations of installation of piezoelectric micro plants and, based on this and other parameters defined for the project, offers an analysis of the technical and economic feasibility of the proposed project. The design and implementation of the proposed tool is presented, which includes the computational method used for pedestrian counting, configuration of piezoelectric cells, economic feasibility analysis methodology and sensitivity analysis of the main parameters that affect the technical and economic feasibility analysis . Through a case study in the largest shopping center in Goiânia - GO, the developed tool is validated and demonstrated. The use of the tool in the case study considered demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of developing micro-plants of this modality in all scenarios considering two generator plates, being unfeasible when considering only one plate. The sensitivity analysis also showed that all the variables considered affect the project’s feasibility, which is more sensitive to the area of the plate, the number of pedestrians and the energy tariff. The results are expected to establish references and parameters to create cellular matrices that generate clean electricity, which can be used in large urban centers, in order to reduce the environmental impacts generated by primary sources, which are generally more polluting.