The device they have come up with is the size of a thumbnail, one-fifth the width of a human hair, and capable of generating roughly one microwatt – enough to light a single pixel on a large LED screen.
So probably only going to be usable for low power devices for a while
The size almost seems like a feature. If it’s durable at all, you make a scale-maile coat that dehumidifies the sweat off of you and provides power for some sensors or something? The article mentions a washing machine size box that would power your whole house (but I’ll bet getting humidity to the middle would be a challenge for that form factor.
Depends on if it can scale and how far apart each has to be from another. A single windmill is not as impressive but you get a field of them you generate much more, hopefully it can get closer to a solar panel and be spread along a large are.
Imagine dead space being utalized as a supliment.
That seems to be the main crux for all new forms of energy. I feel like I’m always reading an article about some new form of energy that has lots of potential but never hear about it again as it had no scalability. Hoping this pans out but I’m always skeptical of these types of articles until they actually become something.
Here’s the explanation of the physics they gave:
Each nanowire was less than one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, wide enough that an airborne water molecule could enter, but so narrow it would bump around inside the tube. Each bump, the team realised, lent the material a small charge, and as the frequency of bumps increased, one end of the tube became differently charged from the other.
"So it’s really like a battery,” says Yao. “You have a positive pull and a negative pull, and when you connect them the charge is going to flow.”
Florida: You all ain’t ready for all this POWAAAAAAA
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is that at a large scale this probably has significant impacts on weather patterns.
I assume a byproduct of this would be water. So you just make it here instead of as rain. Natural watering of crops etc could be an issue so irrigation may need to be implemented however
It’s not nearly that simple. In the US for example, widespread use of this technology along the coasts (where it’s most effective) could mean middle america nearly never gets rain. Unfortunately, that’s where the food comes from and it’s no simple task to pump water from the coast to the midwest.
Bring the device to the south East during the summer and you’ll produce more power than a nuclear power plant
