Advances in Technologies for Energy Harvesting from Pavements: A Comprehensive Review

Pavement energy harvesting has been investigated as a means of converting traffic loading, solar radiation, and pavement thermal gradients into usable electricity or heat. This paper reviews 135 publications available through March 2026 and evaluates the field from a pavement engineering perspective. The literature is organized into six technology families: piezoelectric systems, mechanical-electromagnetic systems, triboelectric systems, thermoelectric systems, hydronic/geothermal/solar-thermal pavements, and photovoltaic or pavement-integrated photovoltaic-thermal systems. The review considers not only reported energy output, but also structural compatibility, durability, constructability, maintenance requirements, safety, and deployment conditions. The synthesis shows that the most credible near-term roles of piezoelectric and triboelectric systems are self-powered sensing and other localized low-power functions rather than bulk electricity generation. Mechanical-electromagnetic systems can produce larger event-level output, but their practicality is limited to low-speed and highly controlled settings because they rely on deliberate surface displacement. Thermoelectric systems are mechanically compatible with pavements, yet their performance remains constrained by weak and transient temperature gradients. Hydronic and solar-thermal pavements are presently the most infrastructure-compatible option for large-area energy recovery because they deliver useful heat and align with snow-melting, seasonal storage, and adjacent building-energy applications. Photovoltaic and photovoltaic-thermal pavements offer direct electrical generation, but continued challenges with transparent cover layers, surface friction, durability, fouling, and maintenance still limit broad roadway deployment. Overall, the review indicates that future progress will depend less on maximizing peak output in isolated prototypes and more on integrated pavement-energy design, standardized performance reporting, durability assessment, techno-economic evaluation, and corridor-scale demonstration.