Preliminary Study on the Potential of Harvesting Energy from Malaysian Road Pavement

Unused energy occurred at the pavement in the form of solar radiation, vibration and
stress have the potential to be converted into more useful energy mainly into
electrical energy. It is an alternative way to produce renewable energy source for
electricity generation in order to replace the depleting non-renewable energy
resources. This paper is to review and evaluate different methods of harvesting
energy from road pavement as well as to identify the most promising method to be
used for Malaysia road. Evaluation on the efficiency and cost-analysis are done
based on the information of current harvesting energy technologies which are
piezoelectric and photovoltaic energy harvesters. Secondary data such as average
daily traffic (ADT) in Malaysia expressways and average annual solar radiation in
Malaysia are collected in order to identify the real potential of harvesting energy
from Malaysia pavement.