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> The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp There's something about that sentence that is just brilliant (excuse the pun). I'm not really

> The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp There's something about that sentence that is just brilliant (excuse the pun). I'm not really sure why. Maybe because it has never occurred to me that what a poinsettia was missing was a dimmer switch? No idea, but I love it.

zaarn 9y ago
I doubt plants will replace desk lamps. Maybe only very dim ones. Even larger organisms like humans aren't powerhouses, we only need about 100 Watt (25 Watt for the brain), imagine you also had to power a 20W lightbulb. You'd have to suddenly increase your daily food consumption by 20%. While this sounds easy for a human, it's not going to be that healthy, even less so for a plant which probably consumes less than a couple watts and a 20 Watt light output will probably exceed any other energy usage of the plant easily.
- carlmr 9y ago
  >Even larger organisms like humans aren't powerhouses, we only need about 100 Watt (25 Watt for the brain), imagine you also had to power a 20W lightbulb. You'd have to suddenly increase your daily food consumption by 20%. This sounds like it could be an amazingly healthy diet product.
- lucozade 9y ago
  I think you're making an assumption about lumens/watt that may or may not be valid. Who knows what a Light Emitting Daisy could achieve?
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    I know one thing for sure: it will achieve less output radiance than it receives as solar insolation. I would be surprised if they were able to make it glow only when it was dark, so put a 50% modifier on that. Then you need to account for the energy needs of the plant, any inefficiencies in the light producing chemistry and light emitting apparatus (a semi-opaque bulk emitter will absorb a lot of the radiation it produces), but we'll generously assume that's equal to the difference between a conventional electric bulb and its light output, so we can approximate the light intensity with our expectations of regular lights. But you also need to account for the photosynthetic efficiency which Wikipedia says is about 2% [1], so you are at 1% of incoming light energy in equivalent electric light power. Solar insolation gives you up to 1 kW per square meter, a large daisy might have an irradiated area of 0.01 meters or 10W input, and you get 1% of that so 0.1W output. That's a couple lumens, or about 10x less than a typical solar landscape light. Which is as you would expect, because we eliminated the light sensor and (more importantly) used photosynthesis instead of a solar panel. But fortunately, these things literally grow like weeds, or on trees! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
- IanCal 9y ago
  I think this will depend on the overall efficiency, but I can find portable reading lights at 1W, and I've got a 5W bulb in my hall. 20W is quite a lot for LEDs. In general I agree, though I'd be interested to see the overall efficiency and output, whether your could get that kind of output from a larger plant. I'm concerned about the (even theoretical) end to end efficiency compared to something like a solar panel + led setup. > This technology could also be used to provide low-intensity indoor lighting, or to transform trees into self-powered streetlights, the researchers say. Streetlights that glow up significantly sounds like a horrible idea for light pollution. While interesting, and I'm happy seeing research done without clear monetisation, I'm not sure what key problems glowing plants actually solve. An honest question, as lots of smart people working on this I assume know a lot more about the issues than someone who's been thinking about it for 5 minutes.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    Low-intensity indoor lighting could probably work. I see the major problem in people being me and giving the plant water with the same regularity as rain the sahara, which means I can actually kill my desk lamp by not caring enough. On the other hand, I've heavily abused my current desk lamp and it works. It's great in terms of theoretical research but I think it might be a bit of stretch to think it could really replace a 2$ metal arm with a off-the-shelf LED strapped to it.
    - namaemuta 9y ago
      > which means I can actually kill my desk lamp by not caring enough But now you have a nice reminder for watering your "lamp" when it isn't glowing as usual.
      - zaarn 9y ago
        By experience; when a plant looks unwell, it's probably already dead and you have been watering a corpse. It's always the goddamn roots.
        9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

I doubt plants will replace desk lamps. Maybe only very dim ones. Even larger organisms like humans aren't powerhouses, we only need about 100 Watt (25 Watt for the brain), imagine you also had to power a 20W lightbulb. You'd have to suddenly increase your daily food consumption by 20%. While this sounds easy for a human, it's not going to be that healthy, even less so for a plant which probably consumes less than a couple watts and a 20 Watt light output will probably exceed any other energy usage of the plant easily.

carlmr 9y ago
>Even larger organisms like humans aren't powerhouses, we only need about 100 Watt (25 Watt for the brain), imagine you also had to power a 20W lightbulb. You'd have to suddenly increase your daily food consumption by 20%. This sounds like it could be an amazingly healthy diet product.
lucozade 9y ago
I think you're making an assumption about lumens/watt that may or may not be valid. Who knows what a Light Emitting Daisy could achieve?
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  I know one thing for sure: it will achieve less output radiance than it receives as solar insolation. I would be surprised if they were able to make it glow only when it was dark, so put a 50% modifier on that. Then you need to account for the energy needs of the plant, any inefficiencies in the light producing chemistry and light emitting apparatus (a semi-opaque bulk emitter will absorb a lot of the radiation it produces), but we'll generously assume that's equal to the difference between a conventional electric bulb and its light output, so we can approximate the light intensity with our expectations of regular lights. But you also need to account for the photosynthetic efficiency which Wikipedia says is about 2% [1], so you are at 1% of incoming light energy in equivalent electric light power. Solar insolation gives you up to 1 kW per square meter, a large daisy might have an irradiated area of 0.01 meters or 10W input, and you get 1% of that so 0.1W output. That's a couple lumens, or about 10x less than a typical solar landscape light. Which is as you would expect, because we eliminated the light sensor and (more importantly) used photosynthesis instead of a solar panel. But fortunately, these things literally grow like weeds, or on trees! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
IanCal 9y ago
I think this will depend on the overall efficiency, but I can find portable reading lights at 1W, and I've got a 5W bulb in my hall. 20W is quite a lot for LEDs. In general I agree, though I'd be interested to see the overall efficiency and output, whether your could get that kind of output from a larger plant. I'm concerned about the (even theoretical) end to end efficiency compared to something like a solar panel + led setup. > This technology could also be used to provide low-intensity indoor lighting, or to transform trees into self-powered streetlights, the researchers say. Streetlights that glow up significantly sounds like a horrible idea for light pollution. While interesting, and I'm happy seeing research done without clear monetisation, I'm not sure what key problems glowing plants actually solve. An honest question, as lots of smart people working on this I assume know a lot more about the issues than someone who's been thinking about it for 5 minutes.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Low-intensity indoor lighting could probably work. I see the major problem in people being me and giving the plant water with the same regularity as rain the sahara, which means I can actually kill my desk lamp by not caring enough. On the other hand, I've heavily abused my current desk lamp and it works. It's great in terms of theoretical research but I think it might be a bit of stretch to think it could really replace a 2$ metal arm with a off-the-shelf LED strapped to it.
  - namaemuta 9y ago
    > which means I can actually kill my desk lamp by not caring enough But now you have a nice reminder for watering your "lamp" when it isn't glowing as usual.
    - zaarn 9y ago
      By experience; when a plant looks unwell, it's probably already dead and you have been watering a corpse. It's always the goddamn roots.
      - 9y ago