The Electric Eel

[All Seeing Eye]

I think we've all seen the news about the Electic Eel used in Japan to power a set of Christmas lights and I was thinking that we could build a huge lake and breed thousands of these eels (each eel gives off 500 volts), the lake could be criss crossed with electrical wiring to harness the electric current given off by the eels to charge huge batterys at the sides of the lake, the power could then be leaked from the batterys into the national grid as power for homes. The only thing we'd need do is feed the eels.

My question to you is, could it work?

 

[Stormrage]

I think the energy returned wouldn't be much less then the energy returned. They spend most of their energy on growing and metabolism.

 

[Zachary Smith]

I'll wait to try it when the next generation "hybrid" eel is developed.

 

[anti-matter]

Very impractical...and a little frightening imo.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Genetically engineered eels that produce more electric could happen ya know.

Holy poop, imagine a genetic cross breed between an Eel and a Whale (an Eel the size of a whale!), imagine the electric current generated from THAT bad boy!!!!!

 

[Meredith]

Much closer to home, take the DNA that makes electric cells and engineer there to be biocompatible with human to prevent rejection and you could power limbs off such things and internal computer like cyberbrain.