Researchers from MIT discovered that trees carry a small amount of electrical power, and they founded a company which would harness it and use it as a source of power.

Through their newly-founded Voltree company, the scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to tap on tree energy and use it as their main power source. Andreas Mershin, a postdoctoral researcher from MIT involved in the study says that “People have known about this phenomena for many years and have tried to explain it by various exotic mechanisms”. Chris Love, his senior colleague from MIT and Vice President of the Voltree company explains, “The cause of it is a simple pH difference between the tree and the soil”.

The company collaborates with the U.S. Forest Service as its members created inexpensive sensors fueled by tree power that will track forest humidity and temperature levels. This will provide firefighters and forest managers a helpful device in predicting and monitoring forest fires. Using a four-foot high ficus placed inside a Faraday cage (which prevents static electrical fields from the outside from entering) and platinum electrodes stuck in the plant and soil, Mershin and Love detected that a small electrical charge was emitted by the ficus.

They also demonstrated that the power was caused by the pH differences between tree and soil by changing the soil acidity from acidic 2 to basic 12. Every pH unit change yielded an additional 59 milivolts electrical current amount. Although it may not seem much (a regular remote control battery's output is 1.5 volts while the plant only gives a few hundred millivolts at best), some engineering tricks can boost the tree's output to 2.4 volts, enough for the sensors they plan to use. The 15-year lasting sensors will be placed 65 feet (about 20 meters) away from each other and will transmit the data along their network towards a weather station, where the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho will collect it.