A team of researchers from the University of California Los Angeles have created a unique device that can generate electricity from snowfall, science media report , citing a paper published in the journal Nano Technology. The device is basically a vastly improved weather station, which, in addition to measuring how much snow is falling at any given time and what direction and speed the wind is blowing at, can convert the snow power utilizing the principles of static electricity generation. The researchers have called their creation a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator, or a snow TENG, and the senior author of the paper, chemistry and biochemistry professor Richard Kaner, explains it as follows: “Static electricity occurs from the interaction of one material that captures electrons and another that gives up electrons. You separate the charges and create electricity out of essentially nothing.” In fact, it’s a little bit more than nothing. […]