According to the articles, "Electrical Circuit Runs Entirely Off Power in Trees," published Sept. 9, 2009 in ScienceDaily, and "Preventing Forest Fires with Tree Power," published Sept. 23,2008, in M.I.T. news. Plants generate electricity internally. Scientists at the University of Washington have created nano circuits that use such a tiny bit of electrical power that they can run on the small voltages that trees create.
These small voltages coming from trees are called nano circuits. There’s an immense future in using the internal electrical power that trees have inside them without harming the trees. The electricity is going out into the air.
The nano circuits students created run on the voltages that the trees create. How the scientists accomplish this tapping of free energy from trees is by using tailored "boost converters" which turns each tree’s 200 millivolt voltage into very usable 1.1 volts of electricity. The 1.1 volts are close to that of a rechargeable AA battery.
The current capacity of the electricity is a lot lower in the tree. But circuitry is designed to allow the electricity to accumulate until enough electricity is built up in order to operate an electrical device for a short period of time.
The electrical current given off by trees can power small devices to protect the trees. At M.I.T. (according to the article, "Preventing Forest Fires with Tree Power,") the researchers are looking into the idea of putting data-gathering instruments on trees. That way scientists can find out what the risk of forest fires is at any particular moment. The batteries would recharge themselves from the electricity given off from trees.
Then the tree-derived electricity would run low-power transmitters at certain predictable times. Trees would relay information from one tree to another until the data piles up in a hub. Finally, at the hub of that database, a more powerful transmitter would send the data to specific forestry command headquarters.
The whole idea is to make data transmission greener. Instead of cutting down trees, the idea is to nourish them, and as they give off their internal electricity just by thriving, the voltage isn’t wasted into the atmosphere.
Instead, the idea is to route the electrical current to a hub. In such a way, it could be said, the trees are pulling their own weight as they give off fresh oxygen into the atmosphere. Nothing goes to waste from nature, is the idea.
Photo credits: Flickr.com – coconut tree