It began with a finding from researches at MIT that trees can generate a current of up to 200 millivolts. That’s one fifth of a volt, which isn’t so much, but starting hooking it up and storing it, and you can get a bit of power out of an array. To give you an idea, your standard AA battery is 6 volts, and your car battery is 12.
Specifically, it is the big leaf maple that generates the most electricity. Scientists attached the tree to a booster that stored the energy for later use, and eventually got the charge up to 1.1 volts, which is enough to fun low-power electronic equipment.
As for the implications of the experiment, they are so far not so far-reaching, but for now it’s the concept that is important. It’s also hard to say how extracting electrical power from trees would effect the growth and health of the tree itself. But scientists do believe they could use tree-powered equipment self-monitor the health of forests. Another possibility is that they could use forest-powered equipment to detect forest fires in progress and catch them early on. That could save a lot of good acreage.
“Normal electronics are not going to run on the types of voltages and currents that we get out of a tree,” one of the researchers said. “As new generations of technology come online, I think it’s warranted to look back at what’s doable or what’s not doable in terms of a power source.”
In the most baseline of conclusions, this at least shows us that energy is available all over, in every living thing. The question is, how to make it useful.
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