Dutch Company Powers Streetlights With Living Plants

     Over the past year, there has been a sudden boom from green technology companies to innovate ways to power cities never before thought of.

Now, there are reports of a new green method to provide power for people, which if utilized correctly, can replace present-day energy companies. This was discovered by a Dutch company that found a way to harvest electricity coming from the most unlikely of sources: plants.

A Dutch company harnessed electricity from living plants, and then used it to power cell phone chargers, Wi-Fi hotspots, and now over 300 LED streetlights in two different places in the Netherlands. Plant-e as it is called debuted its “starry sky” project in November of last year.

Researchers have been looking for ways to generate electricity basically out of thin air. The founders sat down, looked at the world, and asked themselves where could we harness energy to be used by humans? Then they found it in the by-product of photosynthesis in plants.

The co-founder of Plant-e believes that the new technology is revolutionary. By using plants to generate electricity brings a clean and new energy option to the table, and even better the company plans to expand this technology to wetlands and rice paddies where the electricity can be generated on a wider scale. This invention could mean power could be brought even to the poorest cities!

However, Plant-e’s way of providing power through plants is interesting but not practical to use, especially in the United States and Japan, countries that use a monumental amount of electricity. Presently, Plant-e and other green technology companies like them are researching if it is possible to get around this situation.