Electrical Circuit Runs Entirely Off Power in Trees

A study last year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants generate a voltage of up to 200 millivolts when one electrode is placed in a plant and the other in the surrounding soil. Those researchers have since started a company developing forest sensors that exploit this new power source.

A team of researchers at the University of Washington (UW) sought to further academic research in the field of tree power by building circuits to run off that energy. They successfully ran a circuit entirely off of tree power for the first time.

"As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree," said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.

The UW circuit is built from parts measuring 130 nanometers and it consumes on average just 10 nanowatts of power during operation (a nanowatt is one billionth of a watt).

"Normal electronics are not going to run on the types of voltages and currents that we get out of a tree. But the nanoscale is not just in size, but also in the energy and power consumption," Parviz said.

"As new generations of technology come online," he added, "I think it's warranted to look back at what's doable or what's not doable in terms of a power source."

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Image credit: University of Washington