Battery-less Environment Sensor Using Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting From Soil-Ambient Air Temperature Differences

The data set contains the data collected from experiments sites in Belgium ( Campus Drie Eiken, University of Antwerp, 51.161° N, 4.408° W) and Iceland ( Forhot, 64.008° N, 21.178° W) for the research and evaluation of a battery-less environment sensor powered by energy harvesting. The device uses the temperature difference between soil and air to produce energy with the help of a Thermoelectric Generator (TEG) and powers a wireless sensor node. The data set includes data collected from 2 phases of the study. One during the initial evaluation phase where we collected soil temperatures at 15 cm and air temperature to evaluate the possibilities of producing energy from the temperature differences. Using these data, we estimated the energy production capacity for both sites. Further, a proof-of-concept device was developed, and its performance was evaluated with field experiments. During this process, we collected the voltage level of the storage unit, i.e,  the capacitor, air and soil temperatures and the TEG output voltage. During both phases, the same methods were employed to collect data. The voltage values were measured with a 12-bit ADC and the temperature was measured with 1-Wire temperature sensor. Further, the collected data were transferred to cloud storage in real-time for further analysis and evaluation. 

• cde_mseasurements_oct2020-nov2020.csv
  •  Soil temperature and air temperature data from the Campus Drie Eiken at the  University of Antwerp, Belgium. The data were collected from 2 Oct 2020 to 17 Nov 2020.
• cde_teg_measurements.csv
  • Soil temperature, ambient temperature and the open-circuit voltage of TEG  from Campus Drie Eiken at the  University Antwerp, Belgium from 21 Apr 2021 to 25 Apr May 2021. Also includes the difference calculated between the two temperature values.
• cde_energy_simulated.csv
  • Energy production capacity estimated using the temperature data collected from Campus Drie Eiken at the University of Antwerp.
• aui_measurements_nov-2021.csv
  • Soil temperature and air temperature data from the Forhot research site in Iceland for the month of November 2021.
• aui_teg_measurements.csv
  • Soil temperature, ambient temperature and the open-circuit voltage of TEG collected from the Forhot research site in Iceland. Also includes the difference calculated between the two temperature values. The data were collected from 18 Nov 2021 to 30 Nov 2021
• aui_energy_simulated.csv
  • Energy production capacity estimated using the temperature data collected from the Forhot research site in Iceland.
• cde_capacitor_voltage.csv
  • The voltage level of the capacitor used by the battery-less device to buffer the harvested energy.  The device was deployed at the Campus Drie Eiken and the data collection was carried out from 1 Mar 2022 to 12 Apr 2022. A 15 mF supercapacitor was used.