Puerto Rico was ravaged by Hurricane Maria, September 20. A Twitter interaction between Elon Musk and Ricardo Rossello, Governor of Puerto Rico, led to Tesla sending equipment for equipping Puerto Rican buildings with solar power.
The grandeur of this effort is that instead of rebuilding with traditional power supply producing factories, the people of Puerto Rico have the opportunity to completely transform the way electricity is generated. Less cost. Less dependency.
Another kind of battery is powered by spit. Perhaps you’d prefer the more refined term, saliva? In any case, the power source is one of the elements common to all people, readily available in the mouth.
Although the dream is to make use of saliva to power your cell phone – a rather awkward picture – the current use is far more pressing and beneficial.
In developing countries there is a need for point-of-care diagnostic applications. The amount of power that is needed to run the diagnostic application is very low. As a result the saliva powered battery can accomplish the few minutes of data gathering and communicating necessary to provide medical care.
Who would have thought, say ten years ago? Solar battery to power an entire city and a spit-powered battery designed to gather medical diagnostics.
