The energy consumption of a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system represents a large amount of the total for a commercial or civic building. In order to optimize the system performance and to increase the comfort of people living or working in a building, it is necessary to monitor the relevant parameters of the circulating air flux. To this end, an array of sensors (i.e., temperature, humidity, and CO2 percentage sensors) is usually deployed along the aeraulic ducts and/or in various rooms. Generally, these sensors are powered by wires or batteries, but both methods have some drawbacks. In this paper, a possible solution to these drawbacks is proposed. It presents a wireless sensor node powered by an Energy Harvesting (EH) device acted on by the air flux itself. The collected data are transmitted to a central unit via a LoRa radio channel. The EH device can be placed in air ducts or close to air outlets.
Keywords: air flux; autonomous wireless sensor networks; battery-less air monitoring; powering HVAC systems; wind energy harvesting.