Designing the green energy highway with on-road contactless power transfer.

Designing the green energy highway with on-road contactless power transfer.

Scheele, N.

Silvester, S. (mentor)
Zijlstra, J. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Integrated Product Design

2015-09-30

This thesis presents the implementation of Inductive Power Transfer on the A12 in the Netherlands. On-road inductive power transfer allows electric vehicles to charge while driving. This technology can realize higher driving ranges of vehicles, but also allows decreasing the battery size what would result in a higher performance of the vehicle. Power is transfered from the inverter to the primary coil. Via an electromagnetic flux field, energy is transfered via an air gap to the pickup of the vehicle. The pickup transfers the energy to the motor or the battery. Municipalities want to reduce the amount of fossil fueled vehicles in their cities and stimulate the use of electric vehicles. Though the biggest threshold for consumers is the low driving range of the electric vehicle. The current electric vehicles, apart from Tesla, have an average driving range of 100-130km. This is perfect for daily transportation within the city, but does not allow the vehicle to go far in one drive or unplanned trips. Driving from The Hague to Nijmegen, a very common daily journey for many Dutch people, the electric vehicle would need a 30-minute recharge just after Utrecht. The low driving range and long ‘refueling’ of the vehicles cause discomfort, so called ‘range anxiety’, among its users and is the biggest reason for other drivers to choose an other type of vehicle. In 2030 the share of full autonomous vehicles will be more than 10% and will first be introduced on the highway before they will be allowed to drive full autonomous in cities. The autonomous vehicle will decrease the number of road accidents and the traffic jams on the highway. The autonomous vehicle will also be used for shared vehicle services. Although the vehicles will be shared more often, the amount of traffic will not decrease since the target group for full autonomous vehicles will increase. More people will be able/allowed to use this type of vehicle. The vehicles will also cover 10% more of the current average distances, due to shared services. On-road charging will not only decrease range anxiety, it will also support the growth of autonomous electric vehicles and their shared services. n this thesis the design is worked out for the A12 in the Netherlands. The A12 is one of the highways in the Netherlands with a daily high density of traffic that covers long distances (more than 100km in one journey). This highway runs horizontally across the middle of the Netherlands and connects citizens of multiple big Dutch cities together. Travelling along the A12 the user will find himself in many different landscapes with different impressions. The design proposal in this thesis focuses on the use of autonomous electric vehicles in 2030. The combination of both technological developments allows the user to feel completely free on the highway; the user does not have to keep an eye on the road and does not have to worry about the range of the vehicle. Therefore the design proposal is based on the following vision: The design of the inductive power transfer highway should enable the user to feel ‘sustainable’ and comfortable. The design proposal is based on three design qualities: 1. Making the user feel more sustainable by visually linking the renewable energy sources to the charging sections of the inductive power transfer highway. 2. Stimulation of comfort use of autonomous vehicles by reserving a lane for autonomous vehicles only. The autonomous vehicles will be separated from the normal highway traffic and can therefore perform better. 3. The renewable energy sources are installed in a way that does not interfere with the view on the landscapes. The emergency lanes are covered with solar panels; the so-called solaroad, and Vortex are placed on several places along the banks and the median. In one journey the vehicle encounters two charge sections on the A12, forming together a coverage of 30% of the total driving distance, which in total charge the vehicle enough to travel from The Hague to Nijmegen in one journey. The vehicle can immediately return from Nijmegen to The Hague with only on-road charging. The energy of this round trip is 50% charged on the road. The energy used for on-road charging is 100% generated by renewable energy sources installed along the highway. The location of the IPT system is for both directions installed on locations where traffic with other destinations will be able to charge when their journey is overlapping with the A12. Upon installing the primary coils for inductive power transfer, the toplayer will be renewed with self-healing asphalt. The lifetime of a regular top layer is around 5 years, while self-healing asphalt can last at least 20 years. Every few years the toplayer receives special treatment by induction heating of small iron fibers that are mixed in the bitumen in the top layer. By heating up the fibers, the bitumen becomes soft and cracks in the layer will heal. All the emergency lanes on the highway will be replaced by solaroad. Since this lane creates a very large surface and is often not in use it is a perfect location for harvesting solar energy. A Vortex is a 13m high pole made of reinforced fiberglass, which generates energy by the speed of the wind. Since it has no blades and it takes per Vortex a small surface it is an ideal product to install along the highway. In relation to regular wind turbines, Vortexes are cheaper to use

contactles power transfer
green energy highway
inductive power transfer
the highway in 2030
contactless charging
dynamic charging

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7840e15c-74aa-4e5f-8552-867cf17b4143

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2015 Scheele, N.