permaculture

[mIEKAL aND <dtv@mwt.net>]

from Mass High Tech; The Journal of New England Technology


Plugged in: Startup hopes to tap electricity from trees
01/09/2006 08:05 AM
By Christopher Calnan

http://www.masshightech.com/displayarticledetail.asp? 
art_id=70730&cat_id=165

Don’t tell MagCap Engineering’s president he’s barking up the wrong  
business model.

His Canton company claims to be developing a process of generating  
electricity from living trees and is working with an unidentified  
business in The Netherlands as a possible investor.

But local energy experts have questions about the concept behind the  
proposal.
MagCap Engineering LLC wants to patent a process that converts the  
natural energy of a tree to usable direct-current electricity,  
company President Chris Lagadinos said.

He expects to find investors to help pay for the research needed to  
figure a way to increase the tree power from less than 2 volts to 12  
volts sometime this year, creating an alternative to fossil fuels.

Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s  
Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of  
MagCap’s plans. “I’m wildly skeptical,” he said. “I would need to see  
proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for  
a number of reasons.”

MagCap announced the project Dec. 20 and was subsequently inundated  
with inquiries, Lagadinos said.

“It’s been a zoo, the e-mails we’ve been getting — (we’ve) been  
swamped with contacts (from) all over the world. Most of them  
verified our results to find out we’re for real,” he said.

Lagadinos declined to name the potential investor. But he said the  
Dutch company is in the energy-storage business.

Lagadinos said he didn’t know how much it would cost to develop the  
technology nor how long it would take to produce the 12-volt  
electricity. “I’m hoping within 2006,” he said.

MagCap is developing the system with an Illinois-based inventor named  
Gordon Wadle. Wadle was not available for comment.

Dwayne Breger, manager of the renewable energy and climate change  
group at the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources, said he has  
questions about the source of the energy and whether the process  
would damage trees.

“My reaction is that it sounds too good to be true,” he said. “But  
I’m interested in seeing what they’re able to come up with. What they  
need to demonstrate is that there’s a sustainable energy source over  
time without a degradation to the tree.”
MagCap, which was founded in 1969, lists Raytheon Co., Thales  
Broadcast & Multimedia, Lockheed-Martin Corp. and British Aerospace  
as some of its customers.

Wadle became interested in the concept while studying lightning  
coming from the ground, “which led him to believe that there’s some  
type of power emanating from earth, which led him to trees,”  
Lagadinos said.

He said Wadle has worked on the project about one year and enlisted  
MagCap nine months ago. Lagadinos wasn’t sure why Wadle selected  
MagCap for the project.

Boston-based law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo  
PC filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark  
Office, Lagadinos said.

Mintz Levin patent attorney Jason Mirabito said he wouldn’t have  
filed the application if he didn’t have a reasonable amount of  
confidence in MagCap’s concept. He filed the patent application in  
early December and expects the approval process to take about three  
years. Mirabito acknowleged the uniqueness of MagCap’s proposal.

“This is really something out of left field,” he said. “In my 25  
years of practicing patent law, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Lagadonis said tests have generated 0.8 volts to 1.2 volts by driving  
an aluminum roofing nail half an inch into a tree attached to a  
copper water pipe driven 7 inches into the ground. But the  
electricity is useless because it’s unstable and fluctuates.

The trick will be to learn how to filter and stabilize the  
electricity so it can be used to charge batteries, Lagadinos said.

“It’s a renewable source and it’s an unlimited source,” he said.  
“It’s virtually untapped. The issue is clean energy and it’s readily  
available. There are trees everywhere.”

Manwell said his skepticism is science-based.

“There’s a fundamental law of physics,” he said. “The energy has to  
come from somewhere.”