Plants use leaves and flowers to intake energy from sunlight and convert it for nutrition.

You can power small items like clocks with the acid from an apple.

We can use many solar powered items at the moment.

If my solar fountain can be powered by as few as only three small solar panels, can someone find a way to plug into a tree and use all of the power trapped by its thousands of leaves to power my house electrics?

Actually what you describe here, to use the energy of plants is already reality today.

All those biofuels are nothing else. Biofuels are using the chemical energy of plants which the plants produced with the help of sunlight principally.

Those biofuels stand in direct competition to food production however, which is a major problem. You can see currently how food prices are going up. Thats to a certain part also due to the new trend to make biofuels a recocknizable part of our fuel consumption.

Of course you can make electricity out of biofuels as well. Often this is done by transforming eg special energy maize in large ferementers to biogas (mostly CH4 and CO2 but also other molucules) that can be combusted to move a generator. The byproduct heat can be used through heat exchanger in a local heat distribution network.


The weak point of it all: The plants and technology together with the distances you have to overcome by transport within the process. This has to be optimized because otherwise you will put more into the chain than you get out of it.

Sugar cane is the by far most efficient plant so far (when transformed to ethanol). It has an output/input ratio of over 5. That means you get five time the energy you put into it. Thats fine, but only a dream for the European climate for example. Here ethanol is often produced out of maize or rape. And an output/imput ration of 1,3 is everything else than making euphoric.

Processes are however in the making that are also able to reach the efficiency of sugar cane. One promising method is using fast growing leaf trees that can be reproduced asexually. These trees are cut down to the roots every 4 years for example. The fine thing is they grow from the roots upwards again without causing too much work for the farmer.

Thats just one example but I think one of the most promissing ones.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

I can make a potato power my alarm clock. Lemons work too!

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~John Locke

Discuss the Issue, Not the Poster

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not everyone is entitled to their own facts"
-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind."
-Teddy Roosevelt

That being the case, how do you do it? I've seen the little kits to teach kids how to power a clock with citrus fruit, how do they actually do it?

Slarti, thank you for that post, it's really interesting. My wish is to have one of these huge trees in my back garden continue to grow whilst powering my electrics. I don't want to kill, maim or transport my tree, just have it growing whilst providing my energy. These trees are enormous. If you can use a potato, what's wrong with a tree which is thousands of times bigger and potentially has that much more internal energy available? I know it's simplistic but with the technology we have now I really think the scientists are dragging their feet.

Or is it political? I've read about a proposed wind farm here years ago which hasn't come to fruition because of political delays.

Also the grey men who earn big bucks from current energy systems wouldn't like it.

I dont think it will work out that way.
The fruit or tree or whatever is just the electrolyte. You need to metal pins, one has to work as anode one as cathode. Hell I always hated that part of chemistry Anyway imagine it as battery, because thats what it basically is. The Tree would be just the replacement for the sulfor acid in a car battery. But thats only one part of the battery, The energy however derives fromt he electrodes not the electrolyte. That means after some time the electrodes are exploited. I expect however that a living tree insofar it is possible to use it an electrolyte won't be happy about Zn nails or something like that.

All in all, I think there is a very good technical reason why this is not done. There is simply a lack of connection between the chemical energy of the plant and the energy you get out of that battery.

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"Every country gets the cuisine it deserves"

So our kids wont see a polar bear in a few years big whoop, i didnt see a dinosaur and u dont see me crying

In fact, oil is solar energy captured by plants and animals (mostly microscopic) and buried before they could completely decay. The solar energy these plants and animals had captured was transformed into oil, coal and natural gas over millions of years. The gasoline we pump into our autos or the oil used to heat our homes is really ancient solar energy.

Insofar as taking solar energy directly from living plants, it is highly unlikely that it can be done on a scale large enough to have any significant impact on our energy needs. The energy return on energy invested would be in the negative column. In other words, it would take more energy to tap into plants than you could extract from the plants. Presently, we take decades of stored solar energy stored in a given plant to build a small fire that will burn only a few hours.

The bottom line in your post seems to be that it can be done. Power can be directly extracted from a tree to power something else?
I understand that it's impractical and cumbersome, so is everything when first introduced.

You have a point. Obviously, plants do collect sunlight combining it with nutrients from the soil to produce the energy required to grow, flower or fruit and reproduce. Theoretically, it should be possible to tap some of the more efficient plants and extract energy. However, there are some huge obsticles to overcome before such a system could generate enough energy to play a practical role in meeting our basic energy needs.

First, there must be surplus energy beyond that needed for a given plant to survive and grow. This would be extremely tiny. Second, there would have to be a practical system for connecting all these plants and harvesting excess energy to be fed into a central collection point. Depending on the type of plants, this could mean "wiring" hundreds of thousands of acres of plants together and moving the collected energy long distances to places where it would be needed. Third, energy transmission ultimately results in the loss of energy, so whatever the plant system might generate only a part of it would ultimately reach the end consumer. Fourth, the energy that would reach the end consumers would have to be greater than the energy it would take to produce and operate everything needed in the process and to maintain it over a long period of time. This is sometimes referred to as EROEI (energy return on energy invested). While there are some interesting experiments along these lines, I do not know of any system that has progressed to the point where it can overcome the above obsticles and still produce enough energy to be a viable player in meeting national energy needs.

What you describe is, of course, a mored advanced technology than currently exists. However, it is important to differentiate between technology and energy. Technology may capture energy and convert it into a form humans can use, but technology does not actually produce energy. Be it energy found in moving water, wind, heat, etc. no technology is ever 100% efficient. Indeed it is often less than less than 20% efficient. That means that while a forest may absorb large quantities of energy through photosynthesis, only a fraction of that energy could be theoretically made available in the form of electricity, heat or other forms of power.

I know I oversimplify, but it works for me a lot of the time...so if a single potato can power a clock, why are we talking about connecting lots of plants?
A potato, an apple, a lemon, one of any of these can power a clock. Can one tree power one? As opposed to many trees?
Sorry, I'm expecting you to have all the answers. I should do some work myself.