Engineers Devise a Way To Harvest Wind Energy From Trees (vice.com)

derekmead writes: Harvesting electrical power from vibrations or other mechanical stress is pretty easy. Turns out all it really takes is a bit of crystal or ceramic material and a couple of wires and, there you go, piezoelectricity. As stress is applied to the material, charge accumulates, which can then be shuttled away to do useful work. The classic example is an electric lighter, in which a spring-loaded hammer smacks a crystal, producing a spark. Another example is described in a new paper in the Journal of Sound and Vibration, courtesy of engineers at Ohio State's Laboratory of Sound and Vibration Research. The basic idea behind the energy harvesting platform: exploit the natural internal resonances of trees within tiny artificial forests capable of generating enough voltage to power sensors and structural monitoring systems.

Comments

Or you could

[Crashmarik]

Slap a solar cell on the tree. (Tree has access to sunlight)

Re:Or you could

[BoogieChile]

Not after you've covered it in solar cells, it doesn't.

Re:Or you could

[Crashmarik]

Oh yea because it takes a tree's worth of solar cells to put out a few milliwatts

Re:Or you could

[Irate Engineer]

I'd exploit the "natural internal resonances of trees" by chopping them down, burning them in a furnace, boiling water to steam, and driving a turbogenerator with the steam. Then you're talking real power; none of this namby-pamby tiny artificial forest electron jiggling nonsense.

Re: Or you could

[ferret4]

Trees will grow canopy to cover your solar panel with shade though.

Re:Or you could

[Viol8]

After the birds have crapped on them for a a few weeks they won't be outputting anything.

Re:Or you could

[Austerity Empowers]

Burning bird crap will produce some energy.

Re:dateline 40,000 BC

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Engineers Devise a Way To Harvest Wind Energy From Trees

Wow. I know Slashdot tends to lag behind the other news sites, but this is ridiculous.

Sorry, meant to make a smart remark about windmills there. It's ruined now. I suck. Sorry, everyone.

Too much theory, not enough practice

[Dereck1701]

The last paragraph pretty much sums it up.
"It's mostly a proof of concept or rather a disproof of the assumption that wind vibrations can't be usefully harvested. Don't expect tiny metal forests to power cities, but it's still a cool idea."
So this appears not to have any practical applications.

Re:Too much theory, not enough practice

[beckett]

So this appears not to have any practical applications.

only if you lack imagination. could see something like this powering sensors (e.g. air quality sampler, barometer, photodetector) would be valuable for leaving self-powered telemetry and a small sensor package to study forest canopy ecosystems, individual tree performance, etc.

Sheahh, right!

[XB-70]

Quoting from the article: "...Yet for dynamic systems, studies show narrow operating regimes which exhibit internal resonance-based behaviors; this additionally suggests that the energetic dynamics may be susceptible to deactivation if stochastic inputs corrupt ideal excitation properties..."

If you can read that techno-babble, you either wrote for The Big Bang Theory or you were a technical advisor.

Re:Sheahh, right!

[Etherwalk]

Quoting from the article: "...Yet for dynamic systems, studies show narrow operating regimes which exhibit internal resonance-based behaviors; this additionally suggests that the energetic dynamics may be susceptible to deactivation if stochastic inputs corrupt ideal excitation properties..."

If you can read that techno-babble, you either wrote for The Big Bang Theory or you were a technical advisor.

Why would you need a technical advisor for a documentary?

Why only trees?

[argStyopa]

I've always wondered why nobody did this with the 'soundwalls' that parallel every urban highway today - all you'd be taking is sound energy, so essentially it would even perhaps improve their sound-deadening qualities, while powering a nearby street light or two.

when a tree falls

[Gravis Zero]

exploit the natural internal resonances of trees within tiny artificial forests capable of generating enough voltage to power sensors and structural monitoring systems.

so they invented self-powered Life Alert system for trees? ;)