
New scientific device creates electricity from snowfall - theconstantium
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/best-in-snow-new-scientific-device-creates-electricity-from-snowfall
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novia
A lot of comments here seem to be missing the point. This isn't supposed to
add electricity to the grid. It just makes a self sufficient weather station
to measure snowfall. Which is cool.

A lot of times you'd want to measure such things away from the grid without
having to worry about batteries.

Something I'm curious about is whether similar tech could be used to self
sufficiently measure pollen.

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Nasrudith
Yeah the electricity output isn't the point but the fact the power generated
is the raw signal. I wonder mostly about the accuracy and precision of such a
sensor. Even its "not snow" triggers could be scientifically useful. Imagine
if say it was sensitive enough it could identify particulates and tell where
heavy metal pollutants land on the tarp.

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RosanaAnaDana
Well I know that lysimeter based snowfall measurement systems can be a real
pain for remote stations in winter, so to me this is the exciting bit.

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kemyd
* A new device - snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator, or snow TENG - creates electricity from falling snow, among other potential uses.

* Richard Kaner (highly influential and cited scientist) and team used 3D printing to design a device that combines silicone with an electrode.

* Thanks to “the ease of fabrication and the availability of silicone” the device, which is essentially a small sheet of plastic, could be produced at low cost.

* It can work in remote areas, doesn’t need batteries, and could be used in solar panels, or self-powered wearables for tracking athletes.

PS. Yesterday posted on [https://bullets.tech](https://bullets.tech) \- I'm
looking for people interested in science to help us writing summaries and
selecting scientific content

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carapace
See also:

Lord Kelvin's thunderstorm:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper)

Vaneless ion wind generator:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator)

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jaytaylor
How does it work, exactly? Can you just attach a lead to a blob of silicone
and begin consuming the energy as soon as snow exposure begins?

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adium
UCLA is finding ways to handle all the snow they see

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maxxxxx
The amount of power they will be harvesting will probably lead to revolution
in measuring miniscule amounts of power :)

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RenRav
Does it rely on the user moving around to knock off snow that accumulated?

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ScottFree
tl;dr: Snow is positively charged and gives up electrons. Silicone is
negatively charged. When falling snow contacts the surface of silicone, that
produces a charge that the device captures, creating electricity.

This appears to be more useful for wearables than as a replacement for solar
panels in the winter. I can't imagine the amount of power generated could be
that great. It reminds me of one of those stationary bikes hooked up to a
toaster.

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jerf
"This appears to be more useful for wearables than as a replacement for solar
panels in the winter."

That's a degree of bullshit so high that it has me seriously questioning what
otherwise sounds at least reasonable. Yeah, I know, every science paper has to
connect itself to some fashionable area of research that will excite the grant
writers, like renewable energy or climate change, but the idea that it would
ever be practical to capture that much power from snow is absurd. This is a
particularly tenuous connection. The upper bounds on this technique are tiny;
any advantage it may have is in its ability to deliver tiny amounts of power
to places that would otherwise have none. If snow had any significant amount
of energy in it, we'd know, because we'd get shocked when we stood in it.

I think I'm going to settle on feeling bad for the scientists that they've
done such interesting work and were forced by the system to spew such heavy
bullshit on top of it to keep getting funded.

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jrace
>>If snow had any significant amount of energy in it, we'd know, because we'd
get shocked when we stood in it.

But....we don't get shocked when we stand out in the sun? And yet solar power
is a real thing!

I am sure people scoffed back in the 1800's when scientist first worked with
solar power.

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jerf
"But....we don't get shocked when we stand out in the sun? And yet solar power
is a real thing!"

The reason I said "shocked" is not that shocking is the only way that energy
can manifest itself. It's because it's the way that _significant static
electricity_ manifests, the claimed mechanism being used to obtain power.

You _can_ tell just by standing in the sunlight that it has substantial
energy, because _you get warm_ , along with anything else in the sunlight.
Therefore it has at least enough energy to do that. Not to mention power the
ecosystem.

"I am sure people scoffed back in the 1800's when scientist first worked with
solar power."

With all due respect, you do not appear to be in a position to be lecturing
people about this sort of thing. You may not understand how energy works, but
some people do.

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fisherwithac
Despite my strong skepticism of this technology being used as a replacement or
even supplement for solar panels anytime in the near future, I really admire
the creative thought process that led them to get even the miniscule results
they did.

I'm not a chemist or phyhsicist in any regard, so I can't say whether this
could be the stepping stone to something more large scale down the line. Could
anyone shed light on whether there are any physical limits given the materials
used (slilcone, snow, etc.) to how much energy you could extract?

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cogman10
In the paper, the product produces 0.2 mW/m^2

Solar panels produce 175W/m^2 for comparison.

If this ever produced 1W/m^2 I'd be shocked.

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jerf
And that's the production during snowfall. Even here in Michigan, the sun
shines a great deal more than we literally have snow falling. And if the snow
is falling all day, it's going to be a light snow that probably isn't reaching
0.2mW/m^2.

Plus, if I'm seeing the physics here in my head properly based on their
description, you can't just stick this out in the snow like a panel and get a
consistent 0.2mW/m^2 even under optimal snow conditions. As the snow
accumulates on the collector it'll insulate the collector from the rest of the
snow. You really want the snow to be _brushing_ the collector and then
departing having given up its excess charge, not _accumulating_ on it.
Sunlight obviously does not present this problem, since it basically _is_ 100%
made out of charge (if you'll pardon the sloppy terminology, asp precision
wouldn't really buy anything here), so there's no additional mass to dispose
of, just any waste heat issues that may arise.

I'm pretty sure that in real conditions the difference between the two would
be another two or three orders of magnitude larger, which is why my other post
is so grumpy. It's multiple orders of magnitude obviously not even remotely
feasible, to the point it's almost insulting that it was said.

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cogman10
I'm pretty skeptical as well that this is useful for really anything. That
energy density is so low that I can't think of a single application where
either batteries, solar, wind, or some combination of the above wouldn't both
work better and be cheaper.

Just to put a little perspective out there, 0.2 mW/m^2 means that 1 square
meter of this stuff would take 600 days in ideal production to match the
amount of energy stored in one charge of a single rechargeable AA (~3Wh).

1 clear day, plus a tiny solar cell and a AA and you can get 600 operating
days of energy really easily.

And here's the thing, if this thing gets buried, it isn't going to generate
electricity. So you have to imagine an environment where the snow is
constantly melting, you can get a giant sheet of this stuff, and for whatever
reason there is no battery chemistry that would work.

You could say "Well, it would make a good snow detector".. but even that it
somewhat silly. Because, again, if it gets buried it won't be detecting more
snow. So now you need some complex rigging to keep it from collecting snow so
it can register that snow is falling. Why not a camera? A weight sensor? etc.
Plenty of pretty cheap and low power equipment can do just this without the
additional concerns introduced by this piece of tech.

This thing is useless. Maybe interesting to make, definitely not practical for
really any application.

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IshKebab
100% useless but very clever nonetheless.

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sctb
We've asked you several times to please comment more substantively. Would you
mind trying a bit harder?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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Animats
Cute. Remember the fad for "energy generating sidewalks"? That got far enough
that there's a startup.[1] It's useless as a power generator, so they figured
out how to market it as a hype generator. "Pavegen creates high engagement
with citizens by converting their footsteps into energy, data and rewards."
They're on Instagram, etc.

[1] [http://www.pavegen.com/](http://www.pavegen.com/)

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starpilot
...it still generates energy. It's a small amount for a small application, but
it's purposeful energy.

