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I'm trying to make a plant (calling all autotrophic beings plants) that harvests energy from storms in an area of my planet within my speculative biology project. The area is the entire equator, which is an area almost (if not completely) covered in water that often goes over 70°C, so a lot of clouds, and lots of thunderstorms, hurricanes, etc. My ideas so far are:

  • Towering plants with some kind of a faraday cage (presumably made of iron sulfide) that turns lightning strikes into heat, then uses the changes of temperature to make glucose through thermosinthase. These changes of temperature could be furthered by having a separate metal part go deep into the sea, so that it transfers the heat from the center of the plant to the cold sea.
  • Stringy, floating plants that connect together and use the static electricity in the air (less fleshed out idea, sorry).

So, would this be plausible and, if not, how could they harvest energy from the storm?

Answer: Using the design @Aadmaa provided about piezoelectricity and after crunching some numbers on atmospheric conditions, I think there will be enough thunder for those vibrations to produce electricity through the piezoelectric effect of zinc oxide, although I will make it be in an organelle similar to a chloroplast.

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    $\begingroup$ Related, if not duplicate: worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/112711/30492 $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ I'll have to change the title. I'm not trying to harvest wind, I'm trying to harvest electricity. That post is about plants harvesting wind power. $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ Opps, my answer below is about harvesting wind via electricity, sorry $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ the problem is a storm is a Lot of high intensity energy at once, the hardest kind to harvest, not just biologically just in general. basically you are asking how to evolve to harvest somthign we can;t harvest with machines. It also happens to be the type of energy living things die from interacting with. $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ For future reference, please know that providing your own answers and seeking more is prohibited in the help center and a reason to close questions. It is only permissible if you explain why they do not answer your question (why they are insufficient), which makes them restrictions, limitaitons and conditions as required by the help center. Finally, per the tour SE is not a discussion board. Changing your question to address existing answers created a prohibited moving target. Please edit your post to remove your final paragraph. $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago

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How about using the piezoelectric effect to drive an electrical potential difference in a specialized organelle that works like a chloroplast - but runs on the AC power generated through vibrations set up by the storm, and mechanically delivered through cellular structures to piezoelectric crystals incorporated into the cells responsible for energy generation?

Cells incorporate quartz or tourmaline, mechanically situated to deliver vibration from the larger structure that the cell is in, to the material. Networks of wire-like conductors, produced by bacterial colonies which have coevolved with the plant life, produce conductive plates - natural reference here.

Suppose two variants of the bacteria exist, and they attack one another if they get too close, which prevents short circuits. There would be evolutionary pressure to enforce this, because the bacteria would otherwise kill their host.

Now you have fairly high voltage between two sets of biological, actually conductive wires. These wires bind to opposite ends of a specialized cellular organelle - and implement something akin to whatever the heck these people are doing to utilize electricity directly to generate ATP. Think, a chloroplast that works with the electric potential difference instead of light.

And more standard plant biology follows.

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  • $\begingroup$ Would the piezoelectric effect be efficient enough, though? I've tried searching on google but, frankly, I don't know what half the units used to measure this mean. Thunder vibrations are often very low-pitched, at around 20Hz, and from what I know piezoelectricity works mostly at higher pitches. $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
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    $\begingroup$ I was thinking the structure of the tree uses the wind mechanically to deliver the vibrations constantly, more so than thunder. In principle it does seem generate enough power that way. There is a paper here about utilizing aeroelastic flutter to generate electrical power and it looks like it'd create plenty of power to drive ATP production. - I'll drop in a more fanciful plan for using the lightning strike itself in a sec $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ @NatureNerd I'd say that shifting the pitch arriving at the crystals isn't that hard to solve (or handwave) $\endgroup$ Commented 14 hours ago
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So, your plant consists of two parts- one which we shall call the field rod, is a thin vine attached to a gasbladder, going relatively high compared to the surrounding ground. At the bottom, there sits the equivalen of a reverse mitochondria, taking electric potential and building ATP.

So when the storm comes, the lightning may hit some of those plants... but the rest, literally eat the electric potential in the air- turning it into ATP/Sugars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning The problem is not - not enough storms, but to many, to much. Leading to the plants getting overfed and diabetic.

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  • $\begingroup$ You didn't really explain what any of this does; I am rather confused. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ A lightning is a discharge between the negative charged sky and the positive charged ground. Where there is a difference of charge- there is a battery, there is effects one can use. Its visible in e.g. St.Elmos fire atoptics.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/…. Now the normal biochemistry is to take sugar- and oxygen and produce electric potential. Nothing impossible in inverting this chemistry- giving electric potential, carbondioxide and producing sugar. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • $\begingroup$ @Jason Blake: Hello Rather confused, im dad! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
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Harvesting electrical energy from storms seems more challenging since it happens so fast. But let's use the piezoelectric effect again. This time... suppose a tree-like life form has two major life phases. Late in life, trees on this evolutionary branch go into their Attractor phase, where they are ready to attract lightning. Up to now, the form they have built above ground creates structures designed to burn explosively when struck by lightning - and convert the energy of the explosion into chemical energy via the activity of piezoelectric structures grown throughout the body, in pearl-like sacs, a sort of fruiting body. Like fruit, the sacs also function as seeds, with the genetic code of the plant.

The pearls' structure is all about the moment of ignition - concentrating the right chemicals and arranging piezoelectric crystals and the sort of biological wires I mentioned in my wind-driven answer, into high-density chemical energy. Like ATP only very high density - too high to obtain under ordinary conditions; but these are no ordinary conditions.

The pearls' tough exteriors mean they survive when little else does; and they are typically flung in every direction in the ignition, because - did I mention? - they have air sacs on one side that burst under pressure when the sacs hit some particular temperature. This flings them free, and the next phase of life begins. Storm-fed seedlings have this huge reserve, like a chicken's egg, which allows them to begin their lives at a massive advantage, growing father and faster with energy captured in a lightning strike.

But perhaps they can still use the wind-based piezo in the same trees as they mature, even though your focus is electrical energy.

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    $\begingroup$ Thank you very much for your answer, and I'll definitely look into it. Do you think the other ideas I suggested might work, though? $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago
  • $\begingroup$ I wonder what the best way is to store up that heat, but it's a fun idea. You might imagine a land that has sand-like underground reservoirs, that retain the heat - like a sand battery so your towering plant gets struck and charges the battery - then the whole tree community lives on that heat for a year or so... Older trees could tweak their chemistry to be more conductive and serve as lightning rod; and when the system is charged, trees become less conductive... $\endgroup$ Commented 2 days ago

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