[HN Gopher] 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
___________________________________________________________________
4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
Author : mrzool
Score : 120 points
Date : 2026-01-14 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-berliner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-berliner.com)
| jandhdhshhh wrote:
| Good on them for going through the trouble to make sure they're
| not wasted
| atarian wrote:
| Hopefully it's real this time:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/viral-free-potatoes-post-cos...
| Aurornis wrote:
| This is an interesting example of what happens when the supply
| and demand curve goes into the extreme ends of the chart: The
| price of "selling" your product goes negative. It costs money to
| get rid of it.
|
| Negative prices occur from time to time in the electricity market
| because some types of power plants are slow to ramp up and down.
| So if demand falls too rapidly, spot electricity prices can
| negative.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Oil briefly went negative a couple years ago too which was
| shocking. I thought about "buying" some, but then realized I'd
| have to set up for the oil to be picked up (or try to sell the
| contract before it expired).
| zahlman wrote:
| > a couple years ago
|
| It was near the beginning of the pandemic, due to the demand
| shock of everything shutting down.
|
| There were probably practical ways to profit off the low
| prices (assuming the risk of them _not_ recovering), but I
| never did figure out something that would work for a retail
| investor.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| The only way to profit was too have a large storage tank.
| nemomarx wrote:
| did it not come with the barrels? I figured you'd just
| need a warehouse and a truck.
|
| (which is a pretty big ask, of course, and maybe free
| labor to pick it up up and move it into the truck...(
| meindnoch wrote:
| Lol, no. When you buy "barrels" of oil on a commodity
| market, the barrel is a unit of volume (42 US gallons).
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Barrels are over $50 each even in bulk. The oil is often
| less than the barrel, "1 barrel" of oil is a unit of
| volume equal to 42 US gallons. The price/barrel is the
| price of _bulk_ oil, not oil literally transported in
| barrels.
| jbm wrote:
| When I worked at a Coke bottler in Japan, we had similar issues
| with product.
|
| Stuff that didn't sell was called "Flush Out" and had to be
| disposed of.
|
| You couldn't legally just dump the contents without paying
| money so I made an app that let employees get cases for
| shipping costs. It was popular, even though we were usually
| talking about weird flavours that no one liked (stuff akin to
| Apple Ginger ale)
|
| They eventually got rid of it, but I was already out of the
| company so I didn't know the reason.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Sometimes employee benefits like that have weird tax
| obligations that the company would rather not deal with.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| > It was popular, even though we were usually talking about
| weird flavours that no one liked (stuff akin to Apple Ginger
| ale)
|
| I know this is beside the point, but Apple Ginger Ale sounds
| legitimately awesome. I've never seen that flavor before, but
| now I really want to try it haha.
| zahlman wrote:
| > The price of "selling" your product goes negative. It costs
| money to get rid of it.
|
| But there also has to be a cost (or other liability) to
| _keeping_ it, or you could just wait for demand to arise.
| (There generally is some kind of inventory /warehousing cost.
| But just saying.)
| lm28469 wrote:
| I've recently seen potatoes for 26ct a kilo in a supermarket
| and wondered how people made money on that, farming,
| transportation, supermarket margin, &c.
| leoc wrote:
| _sigh_ Why am I never where the excitement is?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Sam..? Is that you?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I would want at least a ton of ketchup with that.
| whiterook6 wrote:
| Oh, wow--what if Big Ketchup is behind this? Huge, if true.
| nicbou wrote:
| This is Germany. We might also need mayo, depending on
| preference.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| When life give you potatoes, make vodka... or?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Make fries and freeze them.
| madduci wrote:
| Fries
| cpursley wrote:
| Vodka is generally made from grains.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Vodka can be made from anything with fermentable sugars.
| You're right that grain vodka is more common but potato vodka
| is definitely a thing.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Akvavit
| tenpies wrote:
| Boil them, mash them, stick'em in a stew.
| waldarbeiter wrote:
| "4,000 tons is almost four million kilograms"
| Perz1val wrote:
| LLMs couldn't've written that!
| ihaveajob wrote:
| I guess you're quoting it because it is EXACTLY four million
| kilograms?
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Probably for our freedom unit loving friends, they have a
| different ton (because why not).
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Our freedom tons are built for our particularly large
| trucks.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Believe it or not the Europeans run heavier trucks than
| Americans. Ours just get to be longer.
| localuser13 wrote:
| I also like to take potshots at Americans, but come on.
| It's unlikely that a newspaper called "the berliner" in a
| article about Berlin included this line specifically
| thinking about citizens of a far-away foreign country who
| don't use metric units that often.
|
| Occam's razor says that it's actually one of our noble and
| enlightened European journalists who made that sloppy
| remark without realising it.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| They only reported one significant figure, could be as little
| as 3500. kg or as much as 4499.99999... kg
| mathieuh wrote:
| Maybe targeted at Americans and using US customary short tons
| (which is 907 kg)
| tosti wrote:
| 4,000 tonnes is almost exactly 4 tonne. Could be 4,0004
| tonne.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| That's not how the comma separator works in English.
| mindslight wrote:
| As an American, I'm going to need this as a volume, either in
| terms of Olympic-sized swimming pools or the height of a pile
| in an [American] football stadium. Maybe I'd accept weight as
| a quantity of Ford F-150s, but you'd be pushing it.
| nayuki wrote:
| "4k tons" is 4 gigagrams (Gg).
| dvh wrote:
| 3 days ago I paid EUR0.79/kg in Slovakia.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I've seen 26ct in a lidl in Kosice. For reference an empty
| potatoe mesh bag costs like 15ct each if you buy them as a
| private person in a store
| ArtDev wrote:
| In America, we just let people go hungry while grinding the
| excess crop back into fertilizer.
| jtbayly wrote:
| We let people go hungry? This is really not a problem today.
| sdoering wrote:
| According to non profits, 1 in 7 Americans, 1 in 5 American
| children:
|
| https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
| f1shy wrote:
| In the site says "FACT - 100% of Counties - Hunger exists
| in everywhere - no community is untouched"
|
| What I pretty much suspected. But that in USA 20% of
| children don't get enough? That is a big TIL for my
| ignorance. A sister comment states some child eat only at
| school. Boy I thought (in 2 figure percentage) was only 3rd
| world.
| Aerroon wrote:
| The figures are a bit misleading. First you've got to
| understand what food security is:
|
| > _" at the household level, food security is defined as
| access to food that is adequate in terms of quality,
| quantity, safety and cultural acceptability for all
| household members." (Gillespie, and Mason, 1991)._[0]
|
| These potatoes being given away might not meet all the
| criteria for food security either. Eg they might not have
| all the things that are considered a nutritious meal (but
| I'm unsure).
|
| Second, the website might say "1 in 7 people face _daily_
| challenges ", but it's probably based on this stat:
|
| > _An estimated 86.3 percent of U.S. households were food
| secure throughout the entire year in 2024, with access at
| all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for
| all household members. The remaining households (13.7
| percent) were food insecure at least some time during the
| year._
|
| Ie for the vast majority of these people it's not a daily
| thing, but something that happens sometimes (but even
| sometimes is too much imo).
|
| And from the report summary:
|
| > _Children are usually shielded from the conditions that
| characterize very low food security. However, in 2024,
| children, along with adults, experienced instances of
| very low food security in 0.9 percent of households with
| children, statistically similar to the 1.0 percent in
| both 2023 and 2022. These 318,000 households with very
| low food security among children reported that, at times
| in 2024, children were hungry, skipped a meal, or did not
| eat for a whole day because there was not enough money
| for food._
|
| I'm not saying food insecurity isn't a thing, but these
| headlines often paint a different picture than what's
| really happening.
|
| That said, perhaps the reason why food insecurity is
| relatively low is because these advocacies say what they
| say. Food security is a bit like server up-time - it's
| relatively easy to get 99% uptime, but getting to 99.999%
| uptime is very hard. With food security the numbers are
| lower though - relatively easy to get 80-90% food
| security in a developed country but the last 10% are very
| hard (or at least that's what it seems to me).
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://www.fao.org/4/x0172e/x0172e01.htm
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-
| details?pubid=1136...
| f1shy wrote:
| Thank you. I have to admit I did not take time to real
| all. I was just shocked by the 1 in 5. I kinda suspected
| is not the same definition of poverty and malnutrition in
| the 1st and 3rd world (I lived in both and know there are
| big differences) but is still was shocking high. But as
| you point out, is little more nuanced, and I will not
| keep the 20% figure in my head.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Still a problem in the US. School lunch is the only meal of
| the day for a surprising number of kids.
| nullstyle wrote:
| yes, it very much is. plenty of school age children go
| hungry, and the school district I used to work for had a
| major program to make sure poor kids and "Children in
| transition" (i.e. homeless) were fed at least a good
| breakfast and lunch.
|
| Given the direction of public school funding, and the
| sentiment of MAGA shitheels, I expect the problem to worsen.
| versale wrote:
| Just google for Household Food Security in the US. You might
| get surprised.
| SpudEater wrote:
| This is great news to me.
| honeycrispy wrote:
| Some farmer probably lost a lot of money over this. Our farmers
| feed us, and generally have thin margins. I see headlines like
| this and I generally see it as reason for concern as the market
| not working like it should, and could be a signal of a larger
| problem down the road.
| t-3 wrote:
| This is about the yield of a few hundred acres of potato.
| It's inconsequential in terms of the "market".
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > Some farmer probably lost a lot of money over this.
|
| The farmer got their money (it was purchased in advance). The
| company purchasing it didn't pick it up tho, because demand
| is not there, and they'd likely lose more money on transport
| and distribution. Which is where the two companies doing this
| campaign come in - they pay for distribution costs, so the
| farmer doesn't throw them away.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| These particular potatoes won't be wasted.
|
| But other potatoes likely will be.
|
| It's not like people are suddenly going to want more potatoes.
| fwip wrote:
| Lots of people are price-sensitive to groceries, and will eat
| more potatoes if some of them are free.
| cperciva wrote:
| There is some elasticity of demand. Some people will eat more
| potatoes and less bread or rice. Other people will fill up
| their cupboards; just because the farmer doesn't want to store
| these for later doesn't mean that individual consumers won't.
| lkbm wrote:
| A lot of people will have a few more potato-heavy meals if they
| happen to have more potatoes. This means they'll (presumably)
| buy a little less of other ingredients for a spell, and maybe
| we'll end up with more of those going to waste, but it's
| definitely possible for that not to happen. Seems like a ripple
| of delayed food purchases of dry goods can be absorbed by
| reduced production far, far down the line.
| mrzool wrote:
| Joke's on you, got an air fryer for Christmas and I'm roasting
| potatoes every day, never bought so many potatoes in my life.
| They're absolutely delicious.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| If only they were genetically modified to contain more
| protein
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Is this what life in Europe has come to?
| foofoo55 wrote:
| A farm on the western side of Canada has been doing something
| similar for years:
|
| https://langleyadvancetimes.com/2025/08/09/record-breaking-u...
| dathinab wrote:
| this might cause major financial damage to "traditional local
| markets"(1) and similar in Berlin and Brandenburg close to it
| (depending on what kind of potatoes this are, like quality,
| taste, how the cook (hard, soft), etc.)
|
| (1): Kinda a bit like local farmer markets, but also very
| different.
|
| the problem isn't the giving away stuff for free part
|
| but the scale of it
|
| I mean giving free stuff to people in need is always grate,
| irrelevant of scale.
|
| Giving it to people which can easily afford it on small scale is
| just fine too.
|
| Giving it to people which can easily afford it on gigantic scale
| and it's only slightly hurting the bottom line of some huge
| cooperation, then who cares.
|
| But giving away a product people might have bought from smaller
| local businesses in very larger amounts (more then what such
| small 1-2 person businesses sell in multiple month), that is
| where your "charitable" action might cost people their job and
| you might do far more harm then good.
|
| now Germans are picky about their potato and the chance that 4k
| Tons of free potato are the kind of potato you find in "local
| traditional markets" is pretty slim. So this might all just be
| very hypothetical.
| elcapitan wrote:
| They are giving this away in portions of 1t, which isn't
| practical for normal consumers (unless they manage to pool
| somehow), so this won't have much of an effect on the normal
| consumer market. It's mostly directed at aid organizations,
| social stuff etc.
|
| From the original pages FAQ:
|
| > Wie viele Kartoffeln bekomme ich?
|
| > Jede Abnahmestelle erhalt ca. 1 Tonne (1.000 kg) Kartoffeln.
| dathinab wrote:
| thanks
| usrusr wrote:
| That FAQ is directed at organizations willing to act as a
| _distribution point_. So mostly charities who think they can
| spare the time and effort. I guess a better written FAQ would
| put it "Wie viele Kartoffeln bekommen _wir_?", making it more
| visible that it's directed at organizations. I just sampled a
| few of the distribution points already acknowledged and those
| do look like they will be passing them on to individual
| consumers.
| bell-cot wrote:
| While this give-away sounds cool...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_bank#Germany
|
| https://www.wfp.org/countries/ukraine
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Ultimately this may just move the wastage somehwere else: people
| may get those for free instead of buying them, leading to waste
| in supermarkets/shops. Or they might take more than they need
| because it's free and end up throwing them away.
|
| It seems that they acknowledge that they are doing thus because
| there is a supply glut so potatoes will go to waste in any
| case...
|
| Ultimately this give away is a waste of efforts, too. Sometimes
| there is just nothing to be done...
| bondarchuk wrote:
| To be honest it sounds like you (and some other commenters) are
| just rationalizing because the concept of giving stuff away for
| free is too much at odds with your world view. Maybe some is
| going to waste but surely less than would go to waste if they
| destroyed all of these.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Can we not start with the personal attacks and the
| assumptions about other's "worldviews"?
|
| _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-
| examine. Edit out swipes._
|
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._
| nemomarx wrote:
| It might be a lossy savings, but I would think at least some
| percentage of people who take the free potatoes weren't going
| to buy them and will eat some of them. So maybe you get 5-10
| percent less total waste for the labor time, pessimistically?
| And hopefully more.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| They should take them to France so they can become... you know
| the rest, but now I wonder how much weight the oil would add to
| 4k tons of potatoes.
| wiether wrote:
| I know some people call them "French fries", but history is
| arguing between France and Belgium for their origin.
|
| And nowadays, Belgians eat way more of them per capita than
| they do!
| gigatexal wrote:
| this is awesome, potatoes are so good for you
| bee_rider wrote:
| Unless there's some funny unit issue going on (I know there are
| short and long tons...), it looks like Germany consumed around
| 5000KT of potatoes in 2022.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/potato-co...
|
| > A farm in Saxony has been left with 4,000 tons of potatoes in
| what Berliner Morgenpost is calling "a story about the
| absurdities of our food system".
|
| I dunno; it doesn't seem too absurd, better to have too many than
| too few potatoes.
| Glawen wrote:
| I'm having hard time to visualize it, can you convert them in
| adult elephants and TV Tower height? Bear in mind I only saw
| asian elephants in zoo.
| Xylakant wrote:
| A ton is a big bag (yes, they get delivered in bags and
| that's the name for them), which is pretty exactly a cubic
| meter. 4000 tons is hence a 2x2meter tower, 1km high. Or
| 20mx20m, 10m high.not sure how high you can stack TV towers
| or Asian elephants. The conversion is left as an exercise to
| the reader.
| uniq7 wrote:
| > which is pretty exactly a cubic meter
|
| That would be if we were talking about water (and at 4oC if
| we want to be "exact"), but potatoes have a different
| density and cannot fill the space entirely due to their
| irregular shapes. Are you saying that those two things
| cancel themselves out and the result is that 1 cubic meter
| of potatoes is "exactly" 1 tone?
| olieidel wrote:
| Berlin is a great place to observe policies with good intentions,
| yet negative second-order effects.
|
| Distributing free potatoes will likely cause waste somewhere
| else, as e.g. people will buy less potatoes in supermarkets. The
| waste just becomes less visible as supermarkets dispose of food
| every day.
|
| Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for
| removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for
| plants and the ground water". While that is true to some degree,
| the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects:
| Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt. I see people
| slipping on snow-compacted ice almost every day. How many trees
| have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more people breaking
| their bones?
|
| You can apply for an exemption though, e.g. if you plan to use
| salt on a driveway to a hospital. Processing fees for such an
| exemption are up to 1.4kEUR [1].
|
| The rent cap is another one. But let's go there another day..
|
| [1] https://www.berlin.de/umwelt/themen/natur-pflanzen-
| artenschu...
| palmotea wrote:
| > Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for
| removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for
| plants and the ground water". While that is true to some
| degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order
| effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt.
|
| Rigorously considering second-order (and greater) effects is a
| _massive_ undertaking, though. Like: how do you even know how
| many more people will slip and get hurt without salting
| sidewalks and how much the damage the salt does to "plants and
| ground water," without many careful and expensive research
| projects? And then there's the challenge of weighing such
| completely disparate things: how many injuries are healthier
| plants worth?
|
| Basically is seems easier said than done.
| Xylakant wrote:
| The problem is not salting or not - the problem is that the
| house owners are liable for cleaning the sidewalk and they
| all outsourced it to the same companies. And the companies
| unsurprisingly all fail to deliver on their obligations
| because they take on way more customers they could possibly
| handle. The result is as expected - nothing gets done. A
| shovel and broom, maybe some grit would have been enough.
|
| But there's no shred of enforcement and instead of calling
| for enforcement, politicians now call for relaxing the rules
| on salting.
| card_zero wrote:
| > How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for
| more people breaking their bones?
|
| That has a specific answer, like "twenty". But calculating it
| would be a hopeless task.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy
| conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are
| more slippery, more people get hurt
|
| I seriously doubt they did not know that. The whole point of
| salt is to prevent people from falling. Of course they knew
| more people will fall.
| bigbluesax wrote:
| Is the concept of someone who usually doesn't eat potatoes
| getting a bag and spending the next week making some potato
| dishes really that inconceivable? I don't doubt that this will
| lead to some waste - I've thrown out more half empty potato
| bags than I would like to admit - but that's a very negative
| outlook.
|
| Also how do you choose between negative second order effects?
| Salting roads creates negative effects for groundwater and
| plants which are really hard to mitigate. On the other hand the
| second order effect of people slipping could at least be dealt
| with on an individual level by putting spikes on your shoes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _how do you choose between negative second order effects?_
|
| First off you have to identify them. Until you frame the
| costs and benefits of salting, it isn't clear that the real
| question is how can we improve pedestrian and vehicular
| traction without poisoning our plants and water supply. (I'd
| argue it's frequent ploughing, gravelling and dynamic signs
| for signalling when chains/snowies/AWD are required.)
| literalAardvark wrote:
| You could always just clean the snow instead of salting it.
| It's not rocket science.
| bmulholland wrote:
| Most Berlin sidewalks are uneven cobblestone, not a flat
| uniform concrete, so the cleaning is probably a lot more
| difficult than you're envisioning :)
| Xylakant wrote:
| The neighbors snow response contractor had an electric
| brush on a broom handle, that looked pretty nifty and took
| like 15 minutes for the whole front to be spotless clean.
| Then they added a bit of grit, done. The contractor for our
| block didn't even show up. Not sure allowing salt would
| have changed anything.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean it sounds sort of if you know what the second order
| effect of damage to plants and ground water will be if people
| salt their driveways? I would think you sort of need to run the
| test in production to see which way is more beneficial.
| yunohn wrote:
| Surely if you can consider the second order effects of giving
| away these extra potatoes for free, then you can also consider
| the second order effects of not giving them away? And maybe
| even thinking more about it, consider that they may be going to
| different markets/people/causes?
|
| Given this example is about 1T batches of potatoes, it could be
| used by a business that depends on cheap potatoes like a food
| kitchen, or a business that can absorb the input surge and
| convert it into a product that can be stored longer term like
| frozen foods.
| marc_g wrote:
| As someone who just went outside to buy groceries in Berlin and
| watched them salt the road on my way to Kaufland, I am
| confused. Is it just for sidewalks?
| yorwba wrote:
| Are you sure they weren't using sand or gravel instead?
| marc_g wrote:
| Hmm, I mean it was a lot of white stuff coming out. Again,
| on the street, so maybe it's different rules compared to
| sidewalks. Possibly sand, but I'm pretty sure it's salt.
|
| EDIT: Seems that some roads are allowed to be salted! It's
| a pretty main thoroughfare, so likely the case.
| https://www.bsr.de/bsr-winterdienst-gut-geruestet-fuer-
| die-k...
| olieidel wrote:
| Roads are salted, everything else is not.
| blell wrote:
| >How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more
| people breaking their bones?
|
| The **** is a death cult. They are very very happy to see you
| become an invalid if it avoids the death of a sapling. I know
| that this sounds hyperbolic to the point of being derisive, but
| it's the observable truth.
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| Who specifically are you talking about?
| Voultapher wrote:
| Salting your ground water is also a second-order effect. The
| way you put that statement into quotes shows that you value
| human well being over everything else. Personally I don't. Life
| on earth is a co-op and we don't win by being the last ones
| standing, as we are desperately trying right now.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I prefer to think of it as 4 kilotons.
| meatmanek wrote:
| 4 gigagrams
| rpozarickij wrote:
| > 4,000 tons
|
| I did some math out of curiosity to better visualize this amount
| in my head. If we assume that a typical serving of potatoes in a
| meal where potatoes are an important part is 200g, then with 4
| million kg of potatoes you can make 20 million of such meals (1/4
| of Germany's population).
| t-3 wrote:
| Or ~1600k small sacks of potatoes. About one sack per two
| people in Berlin, which is probably around roughly one per
| household.
| woah wrote:
| Distributing (trucking, rent and employees at grocery stores,
| etc) the potatoes costs more than growing them. Even if they are
| available for free at the farm, the market price in the city
| cannot go below the cost of distribution without grocery stores
| and shipping companies working for free, which they have no
| reason to do. These are already some of the lowest-margin
| businesses out there.
|
| In this case, it seems that Berliner Morgenpost and Ecosia are
| doing shipping and distribution for free, for PR reasons or maybe
| as some kind of charitable volunteering project. It's nice of
| them to volunteer their time, but it seems strange to talk about
| "a story about the absurdities of our food system". Are they
| saying that it is absurd that a newspaper doesn't permanently
| turn into a money-losing grocery distributor?
| wiether wrote:
| The story from Morgenpost:
|
| https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article410886475/gruene-woc...
| politelemon wrote:
| Ich bin ein Berliner
| nicbou wrote:
| That's fun! The distribution points are too far from me, and
| getting the free potatoes would be completely impractical, but I
| am sure some people will benefit.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| That could be a big potato battery bank?
|
| According to google a 200g potato give off about half a volt
| (0.5v) and 0.2mah 4000 tonnes = 4,000,000 kg =
| 4,000,000,000 g num potatoes = 4,000,000,000 / 200 =
| 20,000,000 potatoes volts = 20,000,000 x 0.5v =
| 10,000,000 volts (10megavolts)
|
| current would stay the same at 0.2mah
|
| I am not an electrical engineer, what could we do with this?
| Evidlo wrote:
| Thinking about wattage is more useful. We'd get about 2MW so
| you could run 20k-ish homes (1kW average across a day) for a
| short time until the potato energy is depleted.
|
| You'll also need to buy the metal electrodes.
| barbegal wrote:
| The energy comes from the metal electrodes not the potato.
| Potato is just an electrolyte carrying current between the
| cathode and anode.
| agilob wrote:
| I think it might better to produce alcohols from it and then
| burn the liquids and gasses.
| axel479343 wrote:
| This is so sad. I'm sure there is some way to turn them into
| biofuel. Instead they are just a snack to people that will not
| even appreciate it
| meindnoch wrote:
| >4,000 tons is almost four million kilograms
|
| It is exactly four million kilograms. (Germany uses the SI metric
| ton)
| Aaronmacaron wrote:
| TIL there are two units of measurement that are both called ton
| but confusingly are not the same as a ton. One is a tiny bit
| more than a ton (1.016 tons) and one is a bit less (0.907
| tons). Apparently people use the prefixes long and short to
| differentiate them, at least that part is intuitive.
| jmpman wrote:
| I've wondered if something like this would drive down inflation
| in the US food supply.
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