Publication

Abstract : Statistics show that more than 18,452 villages in India are still unelectrified with more than 890,000 rural households having no access to lighting at all. Since the current electrification schemes are not affordable for rural households, the major challenge was to develop an affordable solution that can be easily used by the villagers. Bicycles are extensively used by villagers. The annual demand for bicycles in India is 2.5 million bicycles per year. In this paper, we propose an innovative methodology to generate and store energy produced during the cycling process and use it later for lighting rural households. We also have integrated a solar panel into our system to allow energy to be generated while the bicycle is not in use but is outdoors during the daytime. This paper describes the design and development of an Energy Cycle (E-Cycle). The complete system was tested extensively to understand the amount of energy generated with respect to the bicycling speed, duration of cycling, etc., as well as the rate of energy produced from the solar panel during cycling and non-cycling periods during varying weather and seasonal conditions. Results show that one bicycle is capable of generating energy for lighting a rural house for 18-20 hours per day. © 2016 IEEE.