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Dutch Company Powers Streetlights With Living Plants; Will Your Cell Phone Be Next?
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Yes! Magazine


Yes! Magazine, November 21, 2014
Posted: December 1st, 2014
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/dutch-company-powers-stree...

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 hours drive away, near Plant-es Wageningen headquarters, are the two first commercial installations of the companys emerging technology ... fueled by the byproducts of living plants. Plant-es co-founder and CEO, Marjolein Helder, believes that this technology could be revolutionary. For decades, middle schoolers have been engineering clocks made from potatoes, which run on a similar principle. Plant-es technology is the first to produce electricity from plants without damaging them. Both projects that lit up the Netherlands this month involved native aquatic plants that were supplied by local greenhouses. The process involves plants growing in modulestwo-square-foot plastic containers connected to other moduleswhere they undergo the process of photosynthesis and convert sunlight, air, and water into sugars. The plants use some of the sugars to grow, but they also discharge a lot of it back into the soil as waste. As the waste breaks down, it releases protons and electrons. Plant-e conducts electricity by placing electrodes into the soil.

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