INFLUENCE OF PARASITIC CAPACITANCES ON THE POWER OUTPUT OF ELECTRET-BASED ENERGY HARVESTING GENERATORS

The power output of electrostatic energy harvesting generators is usually predicted using a widely accepted formulation derived by Boland et al. in 2003. However, this model neglects the effects caused by parallel parasitic capacitances, namely those built into the device itself and those introduced by the measurement setup. Even if such capacitances are in the pF range, they can cause a substantial power loss and the generator power cannot be realiably predicted. This paper describes the derivation and experimental validation of an extended analytical model, that takes parasitic capacitances into account.