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by bbuffone 4976 days ago
An old bad idea -> Many years ago i thought up an idea of creating a FEC - A self contained unit that would convert heat from a forest fires, etc... into energy. The units would be taken by helicopter and dropped into forest fires. Once the fire was over move the units into a grid that could supply energy to millions of homes.

This technology is one missing piece.

2 comments

I'm sorry but that does not sound feasible. Large scale forest fires are accidents and not energy generation stations. The logistics would be prohibitive and absent any forest fires (usually considered a good thing) you'd be babysitting a pile of rust. Also, the heat produced by a forest fire would handily destroy your equipment.

Forest fires at scale tend to be pretty much unmanageable, people are more than happy just to put them out without having to think about extracting energy from them.

10 points for out of the box thinking, minus several for a lack of feasibility. But keep at it, maybe one day you'll hit the jackpot!

My own crazy green energy idea is . . . harvest energy from lightning! Apparently other people have thought of this too, and it doesn't look like it'd work. But if someone could figure it out, it might not be the most steady source of energy, but it'd be the awesomest.