Piezoelectricity In Canada

INTRODUCTION

Background

Today’s population consumes enormous amounts of energy. Even with the new energy efficient products that are available on today’s market, Stats Canada claims that Canada’s energy demand continues to rise each year. This energy demand growth could be attributed to many causes such as: population growth, dependence on technology, development in under developed world countries.
One new alternative energy source that is not getting as much recognition as it should is piezoelectricity. The concept behind piezoelectricity will be examined at a greater length later on in this report. Basically the main concept behind piezoelectricity is compressing a piezo ceramic which will in turn produce a static voltage which we could

Although solar seems to be excluded from most of the disadvantages listed above tied to using renewable energy sources, it still has two big main disadvantages. The first being that, it is impossible to shut off. The fact that there is no way to shut these solar panels off makes them prone to catch fire. This is harmful to the place they are located. It is especially bad when people put them on their roofs which can cause house fires. Another big issue with solar is that it takes a lot of room for the amount of energy that it produces. According to the U.S. Energy Information Association to produce 1 MW of solar energy, assuming that your panels are located in price sunny locations, it takes 7.4 acres of solar panels. When you compare it to the nuclear reactors that produce on average 770MW for approximately 500 acres of land. To produce the same amount of energy as one single nuclear reactor you would need approximately 5698 acres of land which is 11 times the amount of space that nuclear

Scope

In this report you will find a suggestion as to which type of piezoelectric ceramic would be best suited to utilize at Northern College. You will also find calculations outlining how much energy would be available for Northern College to use if they were to install piezoelectric generators within the entrance of the technology hallway. I will provide my recommendation as to whether it would be feasible or not to have the piezoelectric generators installed. Finally, I will prove my theories by building a small piezoelectric generator.

Sources

The primary sources I will be utilising for this project are alternative energy text books, lectures from the alternative energy course I took last semester with Brian Nankervis and the physics behind transforming the kinetic energy used to compress the piezoelectric elements into usable energy. I will also be consulting with my technical advisor, Derryk Morrish, who has extensive knowledge in electronics. I will also be using the APC PiezoCalc app, on my apple I-Phone, to verify my calculations. I am also using the internet for research on statistics that have to do with the current energy supply problems we