Energy extraction system for a rickshaw

While most of the vehicles of modern times are provided with features like horn, indicator and brake lights and even mobile phone charging, pedal drive rickshaw, in spite of being one of the most used vehicles in Bangladesh, lacks any such features. Electrical charging of a battery system has been the major obstacle in using such safety and comfort features in a rickshaw. This work explores the possibility of extracting a fraction of the input pedal power for generating small-scale electricity to self-charge a battery. A system was successfully designed, fabricated and installed on a rickshaw. Availability of appropriate generator, matching the speed requirements of wheel axle and generator, charging control and keeping low system cost have been main challenges. A PC based onboard USB data acquisition system was calibrated and used to record charging performance during road trials. The system was found to be most effective in 5-8 km/h vehicle speed range and the effort of the rickshaw puller increases by 2%.