Getting electricity from plants? Awesome!

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a couple of days.  Life’s been busy, and I know my blog is not as exciting as the comic pages.  There should be one getting posted quite soon today, probably as soon as Nick wakes up.  Today, I wanted to tell you about this pearl of a potential alternative energy tech – plant-microbial fuel cells.

If you take a look at the image above you’ll get the general idea of how this works.  Basically, microbes living in the soil digest excess glucose and stuff from the plants and create ions that can create a current in the ground.  That current can be harnessed and used as electricity.  Sweet, right?

Here’s some cool stuff from the article by Gizmag:

Although the Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell currently only generates 0.4 W per square meter of plant growth, the researchers claim this is more than is generated by fermenting biomass. They also say that future systems could generate as much as 3.2 W per square meter, which would allow a roof measuring 100 m² to supply electricity to a house with an average consumption of 2,800 kWh a year.

So it’s nothing super amazing.  It’s not like this would completely replace all power sources ever.  But, if you already have a lot of plants or crops or something, here’s a way that basically takes nothing from the soil that would damage the plants while providing some electricity.  You’d want it to be controlled, but maybe it could make enough energy to keep the greenhouse warm or to light the hydroponics bay or something.  Or you could just grow weeds on your roof instead of having solar panels.  Who knows.

Here’s the link to the original press release and the company producing these.

Come back later and look for the next comic page.  Let us know what you think in the comments 🙂