The piezoelectric energy harvesters can be an integral part of self-powered sensor system due to its compatibility with semiconductor technology. In this paper, a modified structural geometry has been proposed in order to improve the performance of energy harvesters with classical cantilever topology by incorporating through holes. A detail mathematical analysis has been carried out to manifest the effect of through hole on resonant frequency of piezo harvester using Rayleigh–Ritz method. The theoretical analysis is validated through simulation studies as well as experimental results. Accordingly, an in-house low cost experimental set-up has been developed using Polyvinylidinefluoride (PVDF) based macro-level energy harvester and loud speaker based vibration set-up. It has been observed that the resonant frequency is reduced from 26.23 Hz to 21.94 Hz due to incorporation of hole to classical cantilever for a given dimension. With input acceleration of 3.7 g, the developed macro-harvester set-up resonates at 23 Hz and is capable of producing power of 59.93 