Testing the Waters

SCIENTISTS GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM RAINDROPS

Siowling Soh, an engineer at the National University of Singapore and a group of colleagues have discovered a clever way of generating clean power which could run your lights with rain. Using nothing more than water droplets and a vertical tube, Soh and his fellow scientists have managed to generate enough electricity to light up 12 LEDs for 20 seconds.

"There is a lot of energy in rain," says "If we can tap into this vast amount of energy, we can move toward a more sustainable society."

Reporting in ACS Central Science, Soh explained that rather than a continuous flow of water, their plug-flow technique relies on charge separation, a process where oppositely charged particles become spatially divided, creating a voltage between them. Unlike traditional hydroelectricity, which relies on rivers and massive turbines, this system only needs rain. They say their model could be expanded for harnessing larger amounts of electricity in the future by installing rain-catching tubes on roofs, which would be good for urban settings, or next to waterfalls.

"We think it will be helpful in rainy places, including tropical countries like Singapore", he said. This exciting innovation also offers exciting possibilities for powering devices in off-grid areas around the world.