We report on the succesful fabrication of ZnO nanorod (NR)-based robust piezoelectric nanogenerators(PNGs) by using Cu foil substrate. The ZnO NRs are successfully grown on the Cu foil substrate by using all solutionbased method, a two step hydrothermal synthesis. The ZnO NRs are grown along c-axis well with an average diameterof 75~80 nm and length of 1~1.5 µm. The ZnO NRs showed abnormal photoluminescence specrta which is attributedfrom surface plasmon resonance assistant enhancement at specific wavelength. The PNGs on the SUS substrates showtypical piezoelectric output performance which showing a frequency dependent voltage enhancement and polarity depen-dent charging and discharging characteristics. The output voltage range is 0.79~2.28 V with variation of input strain fre-quency of 1.8~3.9 Hz. The PNG on Cu foil shows reliable output performance even at the operation over 200 timeswithout showing degradation of output voltage. The current output from the PNG is 0.7 µA/cm2 which is a typical out-put range from the ZnO NR-based PNGs. These performance enhancement is attributed from the high flexibility, highelectrical conductivity and excellent heat dissipation properties of the Cu foil as a substrate.