energies Article Designing a Wind Energy Harvester for Connected Vehicles in Green Cities Zuhaib Ashfaq Khan 1 , Hafiz Husnain Raza Sherazi 2,* , Mubashir Ali 3 , Muhammad Ali Imran 4,5 , Ikram Ur Rehman 2 and Prasun Chakrabarti 6   Citation: Khan, Z.A.; Sherazi, H.H.R.; Ali, M.; Imran, M.A.; Rehman, I.U.; Chakrabarti, P. Designing a Wind Energy Harvester for Connected Vehicles in Green Cities. Energies 2021, 14, 5408. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14175408 Academic Editor: Dibin Zhu Received: 7 July 2021 Accepted: 17 August 2021 Published: 31 August 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Attock Campus, COMSATS University Islamabad, Punjab 43600, Pakistan; zuhaibkhan@cuiatk.edu.pk 2 School of Computing and Engineering, University of West London, London W5 5RF, UK; ikram.rehman@uwl.ac.uk 3 Department of Management, Information and Production Engineering, University of Bergamo, 24044 Bergamo, Italy; mubashir.ali@unibg.it 4 School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK; muhammad.imran@glasgow.ac.uk 5 Artificial Intelligence Research Centre (AIRC), Ajman University, Ajman 20550, United Arab Emirates 6 Techno India NJR Institute of Technology, Udaipur, Rajasthan 313003, India; drprasun.cse@gmail.com * Correspondence: sherazi@uwl.ac.uk Abstract: Electric vehicles (EVs) have recently gained momentum as an integral part of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) when authorities started expanding their low emission zones (LEZs) in an effort to build green cities with low carbon footprints. Energy is one of the key requirements of EVs, not only to support the smooth and sustainable operation of EVs, but also to ensure connectivity between the vehicle and the infrastructure in the critical times such as disaster recovery operation. In this context, renewable energy sources (such as wind energy) have an important role to play in the automobile sector towards designing energy-harvesting electric vehicles (EH-EV) to mitigate energy reliance on the national grid. In this article, a novel approach is presented to harness energy from a small-scale wind turbine due to vehicle mobility to support the communication primitives in electric vehicles which enable plenty of IoV use cases. The harvested power is then processed through a regulation circuitry to consequently achieve the desired power supply for the end load (i.e., battery or super capacitor). The suitable orientation for optimum conversion efficiency is proposed through ANSYS-based aerodynamics analysis. The voltage-induced by the DC generator is 35 V under the no-load condition while it is 25 V at a rated current of 6.9 A at full-load, yielding a supply of 100 W (on constant voltage) at a speed of 90 mph for nominal battery charging. Keywords: energy harvesting; power management; connected vehicles; wind energy harvester; smart cities; electric vehicle; IoT; Tesla; autonomous sensors 1. Introduction Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) [1,2] can genuinely be viewed as a game changer in repainting the future of electric vehicles. The incorporation of the concept of 5G com- munication modes is also being widely discussed. These communication paradigms have opened up a broad spectrum of technological advancements such as VANET [3,4], IoV [5–7], and industrial automation [8,9]–to name a few. The IoV promotes connectivity to achieve communication not only among the vehicles, but also with the road side infrastructure that promotes safety and ease of service on the road. This encourages the advancement in IoT, which focuses on the provision of communication services as well as the better control and security of household and commercial areas, paving the way for concepts such as smart cities and smart grids [10]. These practices also lead to new ideas in the field of industrial automation, promoting a new generation of robotics and automated control systems for efficient production. These innovations are going to cause a surge in power consumption in the near future, which requires to explore more ways and methods Energies 2021, 14, 5408. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14175408 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies