Wageningen, Netherlands: Dutch scientists have developed a revolutionary system that could one day help isolated villages around the world steadily generate electricity from mundane water-logged plants such as rice growing in paddy fields.

‘It’s based on the principle that plants produce more energy than they need,’ said Marjolein Helder, co-founder of Plant-e, which makes products that harvest energy from living plants.

‘The advantage of this system over wind or solar is that it also works at night and when there’s no wind,’ she told AFP.

Founded in 2009, Plant-e is perfecting a system originally dreamt up at Wageningen University and patented in 2007.

All that the system requires to produce electricity is a plant growing in water, be it mangrove swamps, rice paddies, bogs or simply in a pot or your garden.

‘It’s just the beginning and lots of things still need to be greatly improved, but the potential is enormous,’ said Jacqueline Cramer, professor of sustainable innovation at Utrecht University and former Dutch environment minister.

‘If the system becomes good enough, it could provide electricity for isolated areas or even be installed in our cities and countryside to produce clean electricity,’ she told AFP.

The technology harnesses the excess organic matter produced by the plant during photosynthesis, which is expelled through the plants roots and consumed by micro-organisms.

That consumption frees up electrons, which can then be harvested by placing carbon electrodes close to the roots to generate electricity.

Getting power from plants is not new, ‘but here we don’t need to damage the plant, it’s a non-invasive system,’ said Helder.

Electricity stops being produced if the water evaporates or freezes, but ‘you just need to add water or wait for the ice to melt,’ she said.

‘In many parts of the world they don’t have this kind of problem.’