Engineering360: "Harvesting green energy from white snow"

Let's read that again: 0.2 mW per square meter. I think you get more power from EKG pads on your chest.

Wow 0.2mW per sq m, and by the picture the pad is what 0.1m x 0.1m so that makes it 0.01 sqm so the available power would be 0.002mW, no way to cook the Sunday roast or even light a LED.

"The researchers envision deployment of the battery-less system in remote areas and its incorporation into solar panels to enable continued power generation when covered with snow."

Solar panels can produce 150-200W per square meter, almost 1 million times as much power as snow powered triboelectricity (200 μW/m²).

Forsooth, is it not noteworthy to know where the money is spent in useless devices. Soon we will have thousands of feet treading the Arctic to generate a whole Watt costing $200000.00. No worry on the expense, feed the cat another goldfish.

If you think about Global Warming/Climate Change in its perverse sense of a being a sickness, then the "Energiewende" is the medicine that will eventually kill the doctor while the low-cost triboelectric generator (TENG) is the homeopathic cure, with at least a measurable placebo effect.

Is irony ever an accident? Anyone know the social history of lightbulbs, cars, answering machines, PCs, movies, new genres of music (e.g. Rock and Roll), 3D printing. Most things start small, critics never last.

The irony is, what is important to business people is market and profit. What is important to most people is the exact opposite. Not much use for people who live in snowless countries who actually need the power. That is irony.