Ten Strange and Unusual Ways to Power a Christmas Tree

If you have a few festive lights on the Christmas tree as well as a few going around the house you will know it can cost a fair penny to power them all. That is why I have been looking up alternative ways to power a Christmas tree and it turns out there are plenty of them. From cleaner, more suitable power sources to the weird and bizarre, here are ten weird and wonderful ways you can power a Christmas tree…

Pedal Power

Let’s get one of the most obvious ways out the way. There are loads of pedal-powered Christmas trees but this one located in Royal Festival Hall on Londons South Bank is open for anyone to have a go. Just jump on, get pedalling and feel instantly festive!

Solar Power

There are loads of Christmas trees powered by solar power, but this one located just outside Macy’s contains no less than 30,000 LED solar-powered bulbs making it the biggest solar-powered Christmas tree in the world, and it looks rather beautiful for doing it as well.

Social Media

OK, this is a bit of a cheat as it is powered by electricity. But it doesn’t light up into certain tweets is sent making it a truly interactive, social media-powered Christmas tree, that just so happens to be needed to be plugged in.

Electric Vehicle

Made by energy giant EDF this environmental piece was installed on Glasgow’s busy Buchanan Street and it was powered by an electric vehicle to highlight passers-by to the impact traditionally fueled cars have on the environment.

Water

This one even confuses me. You see it is water-powered, but not by the power of water like a turbine or watermill, this really is water-powered! I’m not going to even pretend to know the science behind this, but you can read more about it here – https://voiland.wsu.edu/2013/12/20/light-up-your-holidays-with-microbial-fuel-cell/

Wind

there will be a lot of people who claim to be able to power a Christmas tree with their wind, but this is a real wind-powered one. Located in San Borja in Lima, Peru it is the perfect example of nature and science working together.

Kissing

OK, so it might not really be powered by kisses much like number 8, but the premise behind it is when someone gets a kiss under the mistletoe it will light up one of the 50,000 red and white LEDs. Someone is going to get sour lips by the time Christmas gets here.

Dancing

Bad dancing and Christmas go hand in hand, so what Nokia decided to do is use those awkward shapes everyone seems to throw at the seasonal dance and make a human-powered Christmas tree! Did they succeed? I have no idea, but I would love to have given it a go.

Electric eel

This is definitely right up there at the more unusual end of the power spectrum. Located at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium in Kakamigahara a rather angry eel generates over 800 watts of power just by swimming around! That is enough to cause a grown man to blackout almost instantly let alone power a few LED lights!

Brussel Sprouts

I am sure that there are many family members out there that could power those string lights by gas after eating too many Brussel Sprouts, so I did enjoy the festive connection of using them to power the Christmas tree. OK, it takes over a thousand sprouts to power it which is quite a lot, but it is still impressive to see it. Here’s to Sprout Power!