Electricity generated from a tree

Electricity which is a crucial form of energy resource for the human kind. There has been lots of initiatives taken by the governments of various nations to save electricity as it may go into cricis. There are many researchs being done to get an alternative resource of electricity. Solar energy is one which is being concentrated a lot for making the full utilisation of the power.


Now a new study says there's enough power in trees to run an electonic ciruit. This study was done by MIT saying that plants generate up to 200 millivolts when one electrode is placed in a plant and the other in the surrounding soil.

The researchers have since started a company developing forest sensors that exploit this new power source. The UW team sought to do further academic research in the field of tree power by building circuits to run off that energy. They successfully ran a circuit solely off tree power for the first time.


Carlton Himes the Co-author, UW undergraduate student, spent last summer exploring likely sites.
He hooked the nails into trees and connected a voltmeted and found that bigleaf maples generated a steady voltage of up to a few hundred millivolts.

The UW team next built a device that could run on available power. Co-author Brian Otis, UW assistant professor of electrical engineering, led the development of a boost converter, a device that takes a low incoming voltage and stores it to produce a greater output. The UW circuit is built from parts measuring 130 nanometres and it consumes on average just 10 nanowatts of power during operation (a nanowatt is one billionth of a watt).

Tree power may not replace the solar power but the system could provide a low-cost option for powering tree sensors that might be used to detect environmental conditions or forest fires. The electronic output could also be used to gauge a tree's health. Looking at these kind of researchs, i can say like Technology is taking such diversion which was never imagined by the human kind.