A driveshaft is mounted horizontally and is allowed to rotate in one direction only, by means of a ratchet. One or more bicycle or motorcycle type rear sprockets, complete with ratchet, are fitted at intervals along the driveshaft. Each has a chain draped over it. One end of each chain has a weight or tension spring, the other end is joined via a long cable to the top of a tree (one tree per chain/sprocket). As the trees sway, the chains are drawn back and forth in a sawing motion over the sprockets, which turns the driveshaft (in a somewhat jerky way). Use the rotation for anything that doesn't need smooth movement - eg saw wood, turn an Archimedes screw, charge batteries...-- spidermother, Jan 26 2006 Halfbaked. Tree_20power [daseva, Jan 26 2006] We've covered this (linky), though your mechanism is a little different.-- daseva, Jan 26 2006 Fair enough GumBob. Should I remove it? I'm still new here.-- spidermother, Jan 26 2006 Doesn't really matter. Some people would say, avoid cluttering the 'bakery with duplicate ideas, but personally I don't delete any of my ideas, even the bad ones. More "honest" that way.-- 5th Earth, Jan 26 2006 Checked the link, my ideas are pretty much all there. I expected to find it under other: energy: wind if I'd been beaten to it. Wish I knew about this site earlier, I thought of this in about 2002. I was helping a friend to look over a farm he was thinking of buying, and thinking about potential sites for wind energy, looked at how much the trees were waving in different areas as a rough guide to windiness, thought 'hey, wait a minute...'-- spidermother, Jan 26 2006 I've deleted about 2 or 3 of my ideas so far, but only ones that someone proved was already here or rants about highly controversial issues, which I realize now should probably be avoided here. I say it's a good idea, and you should keep it, if only as a record of the ideas you've posted on here.-- 21 Quest, Jan 26 2006 Have you been watching E.T. again?
Seriously, though...I don't see huge potential here, but something is better than nothing, and I don't see any reason that this wouldn't work. [+]
Oh, and use of a suitable flywheel could help with the jerkiness.-- Freefall, Jan 26 2006 The flywheel is already mentioned in an annotation on Ra's posting. Actually, my first thought was to use an oldschool double handled saw and power it with a tree and spring (or stand at one end and do the resetting manually, but that involves actually doing some work) to saw wood. Or to cut down other trees - oh, the irony.-- spidermother, Jan 27 2006 halfbakery