Trees and forests are an incredibly important natural resource — not only for lumber and agricultural products, but also because they maintain a huge amount of biodiversity, stabilize their local environments, and help combat climate change as a way to sequester atmospheric carbon. But the one thing they don’t do is make electricity. At least, not directly. [Concept Crafted Creations] is working on solving this issue by essentially turning an unmodified tree into a kind of wind turbine.
The idea works by first attaching a linear generator to the trunk of a tree. This generator has a hand-wound set of coils on the outside, with permanent magnets on a shaft that can travel up and down inside the set of coils. The motion to power the generator comes from a set of ropes connected high up in the tree’s branches. When the wind moves the branches, the ropes transfer the energy to a 3D printed rotational mechanism attached to a gearbox, which then pumps the generator up and down. The more ropes, branches, and generators attached to a tree the more electricity can be produced.
Admittedly, this project is still a proof-of-concept, although the currently deployed prototype seems promising. [Concept Crafted Creations] hopes to work with others building similar devices to improve on the idea and build more refined prototypes in the future. It’s also not the only way of building a wind energy generator outside of the traditional bladed design, either. It’s possible to build a wind-powered generator with no moving parts that uses vibrations instead of rotational motion as well.
I really like the idea behind the generator; efficient or not, that’s pretty neat.
I really like the idea behind the generator; efficient or not, that’s pretty neat.
Agreed^2
such an idea, this generator mounted on the front fork of the bike
Why overcomplicate things? Just use a bicycle dynamo.
Last year Gig Performance showcased prototypes of electric regenerative suspension systems for trucks and cargo vans. These will generate small amounts of electricity from the natural motion of the suspension system as the vehicle drives.
This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them!
You’ve written the final paragraph twice
What happens if it (or its fancier descendants) catches on fire?
The tree burns down!! What do u think happens? Unless it’s raining at the time!
Admittedly, this project will generate an insignificant amount of power.
Admittedly, this project will generate an insignificant amount of power.
Yes, that is true
Yes, that is true
Larry Tesler would be proud of us!
Larry Tesler would be proud of us!
Now that’s what i call,Branching Out!
Tl;dw. Why doesn’t the pulley just turn a normal generator?
Good idea, maybe better to consolidate the CW and counter CW rotational movements then the generator will rotate in only one direction.
What if you made a light metallic net with tiny sensors that would catch even small breezes, and cast it over the tree like an apron? Might deliver more energy to the generator.
Could we use the solar power that trees capture?
It and the ground energy they capture as well! We do it all the time! That’s what we do when we burn wood in generators or to heat our homes. In all seriousness though, I don’t think there’s a way to use that power without at the very least being parasitic to the tree or burning the waste from leaves and fallen branches. And environmentally, those it would likely be better to compost, and by doing so sequestering the carbon back into the ground.
Rotting vegetation produces lots of CO2 also though, does it not?
We already do when we burn wood, lol
Maple syrup, nuts, apples etc etc.
I love this idea, and I love the humility of [Concept Crafted Creations] for putting it out there and asking for input.
I imagine in 10 or 20 years time, we’ll be planting forests of trees that will be teased to grow up around individual generator cores that are mass-produced.
Each generator core will be a hollow, carbon fibre tube with generator hardware inside, accessible from the top of the tube for servicing and decommissioning.
Fast-growing trees that are presently used for building materials could be the choice so that there would be a regular access to generator hardware for repair & recommission.
I think, in time, people may look back on [Concept Crafted Creations]’s post as the seed of a great re-jigging of the concept of renewable energies that work in harmony with nature.
hmm, click baity, what if the tree grows or branch breaks… There have got to be a lot better ways…
Attaching stuff to a living tree isn’t new, not even all that tricky, you just have to come round every now and then so your mounts can be adjusted as the trees grow. And if the branch you are using breaks big deal, there are probably lots of other branches, heck the tree can fall down entirely but there will be other trees, so if the generator survived the fall you can just put it right back up.
This concept is going to make tree surgeons nervous I’d think, as it adds to their entanglement risk, puts more odd materials their little top handle saw won’t like cutting through that may not be visible to them etc. But in terms of actually doing this if you could make it do useful work (not sold on that) it really is a solid idea – you have a wind turbine where the tower is self erecting and getting ever larger on its own for better wind capture and didn’t cost you anything to make, and for good measure its still a tree cleaning the air, maybe producing fruit/nuts etc. You just have to climb a tree to adjust these things every now and then.
Rock-a-by genny on a tree trunk
Making micro power through techie junk
When the bough breaks the power will fall….
And down comes this idea e-trash and all.
I’d think for a more permanent install having a trio or more of coil/magnet tubes spaced relatively evenly around the circumference of the thicker part of the tree you are calling static directly connected to lines along the flexing bits on the way up – somewhat like those octopus tentacle puppets with the flexing branch being the spine – but operating in reverse here would be a better choice than the gear system. Any movement in any direction should get captured and if the flexing branch is say 10 meters long and the generator only wants to move a few centimetre it doesn’t actually need to bend very much to get that operating stroke – from the imaginary zero line through the centre of the branch your active ropes are going to be 5? 10? 15 cm distant, so as their guides bend to match that arc they have got longer or shorter by a good amount.
Interesting concept, yet I don’t see a forest of complex contraptions (a possibly very maintenance intensive setup) gather more energy than a single conventional wind turbine. You’d need a lot of trees to get a few useful MW, some things just don’t scale well.
The rest of the channel though has some interesting (more serious) things for example a ceiling mounted camera slider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-2z42E_bg which also deserves a place on hackaday if you’d ask me.
Does it need to replace a giant forest clearance scale wind turbine though? If the point is grid scale generation trying something like this at that scale clearly isn’t a great idea, you’d have to be climbing way to many tree.
However if the point is charge up your cabin’s batteries, power your wildlife camera, satellite phone or any other more modest demand this may actually be the best solution – solar isn’t good in a wooded environment, between the tree shading and dropping crap on the panels it just isn’t a solution for that location, maybe in some places you could use the stream/river or a small but more conventional wind capture system, but both of those require much more stuff to be transported and are far bigger building project to reach the minimum size they will actually function at all. Where this is probably something you could carry in a backpack or two… So while I don’t really think this concept is ever going to be very practical at all I’ll not write it off for the smaller scales just yet.
I suspect the forest animals would not take to kindly to miles of copper cabling connecting thousands of trees together. All being powered by ropes and gears which wild life keep getting hurt by or destroying.
I’m not here to be captain planet but between this idea and “what if we just built one nuclear power plant” I think the second option might just be loved by nature a bit more.
Plus forest animals are always stealing copper wire for its scrap value
Not stealing, appropriating.
what happened when rain is droping down?
The next phase of the project will include a waterwheel generator placed above this one?
Interesting, but he never reviles how much power he got from this.
Oh, I suspect that he might very much revile the amount of power he got from this.
“Imagine if trees gave off wifi signals, we would be planting so many trees and we’d probably save the Planet too. Too bad they only produce the oxygen we breathe.”
We are so close …
There ought to be enough electricity generated to power an IOT sensor as a part of forest fire detector network. A very sound idea I think. Well done!
There is a guy on Youtube who buys clean playground sand from Home Depot and pans is for gold. He has panned tons of sand, now, and yes, he has extracted measurable amounts of gold.
So… will this trigger a new gold rush? Of course not. His “profit” does not account for the cost of purchasing, transporting, processing, or disposal of the washed sand. It does not account for equipment or enegy costs. It doesn’t even account for his time.
Truth is, his is an academic exercise, not a practical one… an answer to the question, “I wonder if it’s possible to…” Ironically, he’ll make several orders of magnitude more “profit” on the resulting Youtube content, than he’ll ever make on the gold.
That’s how I see this “proof of concept” tree generator—an interesting and entertaining parlor trick…. and that’s presuming we don’t discover that this mechanism injures the tree, interferes with nesting of birds, or that a forest-ful of these gizmos, whirring away, masks the mating call of some endangered cricket.
That’s a lot of words to call this clickbait ‘clickbait’.
I just hope the check cleared before the editors posted it.
Not a terrible idea…
I have plenty of wind, and a few trees, but they’re silver maple trees. The first branch I connect a generator to will be the next one that breaks off and takes the generator down with it 🤦♂️
True
It’s not often you see a scotch yoke in the wild!
Once upon a time an old permaculturist shared an idea with me and the others in his class… it’s like this, except the cable goes all the way up one tree, wraps around a pulley, and then anchors on a nearby tree. The bottom of the cable has some sort of spring mechanism that retracts it onto a winch.
As the trees sway, there’ll be some variation in the distance between the two treetops, which makes the cable extend and retract. A pulley down at the bottom of the cable harvests that high-torque, low-speed energy and either uses the mechanical energy directly (his design was for a washing machine, which would be perfect — brings ‘high efficiency’ into a whole new ballpark) or converts it to low-torque, high-speed for use in a generator.
Anyhow I love this idea — I can definitely see it being useful for powering field instruments.
Field day or camping! Shoot up to middle of big moving branch down to ground anchor or truck bumper no damage to trunk. Ground device is a geared up drum one way clutch a small PM DC motor as big as your hand would be all it takes. QRP for sure. Speed of flux change is what makes power so gear up a few inches of sway pull to spin a little generator than slow moving huge magnets and coils for the same QRP levels.
Seems to me that the bending motion of a tree generates much more torque than this generator is using. Imo It should be possible to add some gearing.
Also, this up-down motion has losses. If the swaying of the tree can be converted in a rotation movement for the generator, you would win some efficiency.
And once you have a rotating movement for your generator, I think that adding a flywheel would help with efficiency as well.
Y’all can find me in my backyard when I get home to south carolina next week printing a prototype and trying to figure out how to get a rope to the top of some 100ft tall trees
Shoot an arrow withs spool of fishing line attached to the bow works pretty good.
Wasting resources pursuing paltry energy returns is not green.
There is energy all around us.
Use brain and estimate scale before committing time and money.
Build a damn windmill (if that’s what your into). Beware physics.
Build car to run on wood…(so dirty, but so cool).
Almost worth taking the head off weekly, to clean off the carbon, like a direct injected German car. I digress.
Don’t waste the copper on this nonsense.
Payback time on the resources in the gen will far exceed the gens life.
The economics of youtube is separate question.
Don’t click the clickbait.
Eventually if they don’t get clicks they will stop paying hackaday.
We can all get back to guns, pulsejets, explosions and fire (best projects check all).
You do have to consider use case, which usually comes with restrictions and so what the alternatives may actually be before going ‘build a damn windmill’. If you have to ship a few tanks full of diesel a few hundred miles and maintain the generator out in the middle of nowhere every year over the same lifespan, or ship several tonnes of steel and concrete, probably a JCB or similar construction vehicle to that isolated location so you can build even the small windmill….
Something like this may become by far the best option, both in terms of plausibility to build at all and green credentials sometimes. So though I do think this system contains way to many relative expensive resources and likely isn’t very effective as it stands the concept itself isn’t stupid, if you can make it actually functional, just situational.
Ha, Ha, It’s not a windmill! It’s a wind turbine. Big difference….
A windmill is a device that mills (e.g., flour) via power of wind (like the Dutch windmills).
A wind turbine is a device that captures wind energy to rotate an object, like a generator to produce electricity.
Ditto for watermill and water turbine.
Mills and turbines are two very different things.
I think we should just tap the trees for sap and burn it.
The Quebec maple syrup farmers alliance could become the new OPEC.
Haha, yes Robert — since as a child I’ve worked a “sugar bush” plot of maples, once or twice, with a horse-drawn sleigh, collecting buckets of sap in the spring snow — how about adding a tiny electric water-boiler to the rig ⚡ hehe, and then the syrup would be ready-made… right at at the tree! 🍁 😹 “Grade E, for electric!” 😂 LoL
Very interesting idea. Sincerely appreciated the very detailed project description and how managed to get around the technical challenges.
Can you share with us the following informations?:
1. How much power (Watt) is generated by the concept design?
2. Can you post a snapshot from an oscilloscope?
Do they realise that they are ‘stealing’ energy from the tree which otherwise would have been used to shift sap through the trunk and to strengthen the roots. No energy is free !
Anyone name the sci-fi movie with a tree powered transmitter?
Yes, sort of…
I hope nobody said this, but you could (possibly) double up the Linear Generators by putting them closely next to each other. The one shown has 2 bars going out in roughly a 45° angle. Those bars meet above the gears. Now. Imagine having 1 Linear System on the right. On the right side of this, the right bar goes up at 45°. The left Linear System has the other bar on IT’S left, extending up at 45°. The 2 bars still converge LIKE a “V”, but now the bottom will have a line that’s horizontal. The lines are still wrapped around the gears of both pulleys, going to the left, and right. And still works up, and down.
The other thing I was curious about, was what if the outside tube of the Linear Generator was longer? This would cause the inside tube to pass by more coils on the outside. You would need some stronger magnets on the bottom to still have the action of repelling, but yeah. Idk. I’m probably wrong about this second part. Just a couple ideas. Hope you can use them!
Instead of complication of strings that would be difficult to maintain… try putting linear generators on tip of branches and let them oscillate with help of springs and gravity. Then combine electricity generated after rectifying.
I love how you explain every step you take so it becomes accessible and understandable to me, who is not an engineer. But you convince me that we all have a little engineer-sense in us, and this idea presents a great possible “soft” energy source… plus spurs ideas and a springboard for others to go forth. Thank you!