Meet E-Kaia, a new technology that will charge your mobile devices with your houseplant

“From our Friends over a Earth, We Are One (ewao).”

A team of Chilean engineers have developed a mobile charger that works with the photosynthetic energy by connecting a battery to a plant. Carolina Guerrero, Evelyn Camila and Aravena Rupcich have created a new system for charging electronic devices without resorting to the electrical grid. To make this possible, it took some ingenuity and paying attention to biology class. This is how E-Kaia was designed and developed, a mobile charger that literally is plugged into a plant.

The trio developed the technology in 2009 when they were students at Duoc UC in Valparaíso and the Andrés Bello National University.

As strange as it may sound, this revolutionary, light and portable invention, uses the residual energy of a plant’s photosynthesis and converts it into electrical energy. For the device to function, a biocircuit is buried into the soil of the plant while a USB output is positioned above the plant pot. The biocircuit has an electrode that captures electrons and turns them into a form of electricity. The most “beautiful” part of this technology is that not all of the electrons are used by the device so harvesting them and using them to charge other devices does not impact the plant at all.

Specific details about this technology is still secret, because, although there already a dozen of firms lined up to et their hands on this technology, the patent for this technology is still pending.