Dutch Company Powers Streetlights With Living Plants; Will Your Cell Phone Be Next?

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/312-16/27099-dutch-company-powers-streetlights-with-living-plants-will-your-cell-phone-be-next

In Hembrug, Netherlands, a crowd stood in a park and looked up into the evening sky, waiting for lights to shine. This month more than 300 LED lights were illuminated by the Dutch company Plant-e in a new energy project called “Starry Sky.” Although the bulbs were ordinary, the electricity running through them derived from a new process that harnesses the power of living plants.

“Starry Sky” and a similar project an hour’s drive away, near Plant-e’s Wageningen headquarters, are the two first commercial installations of the company’s emerging technology. Both power lighting, but the company also sells Wi-Fi hot spots, mobile chargers, and rooftop electricity modules, all fueled by the byproducts of living plants.

Plant-e’s co-founder and CEO, Marjolein Helder, believes that this technology could be revolutionary. Using plants to generate electricity brings a new clean energy option to the table, but even more exciting, the company plans to expand the technology to existing wetlands and rice paddies where electricity can be generated on a larger scale. This could give power to some of the world’s poorest places.

Although the idea of using plants and photosynthesis to extract energy is not a new one—for decades middle schoolers have been engineering clocks made from potatoes, which run on a similar principle—Plant-e’s technology is the first to produce electricity from plants without damaging them.

Helder was working on her master’s thesis in environmental technology at Wageningen University when she first began to research plant energy. She had aspirations to be an entrepreneur and agreed to research the technology only if she could spend time each week pursuing her business interests. The two endeavors came together when Helder started working on a business case for what is now Plant-e.

[bluestateguy]

1. You do know what's going on right now?

[Nihil]

2. Cryptic, rhetorical or just confused? (n/t)