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Q: @chubbs5740 on Twitter asked:
A: Possible? Absolutely. Effective? Not so much. To generate enough hydropower to charge anything, you’d need a lot of downward pressure, says Bob Bass, a power engineer at Portland State University. “In a rain gutter, you don’t have that push.” You could create it by storing water on the roof, but the main problem is simple: “It doesn’t rain that much.” The best you could do with the power is run some LED lights. But don’t expect to find one in stores anytime soon.
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This article was originally published in the March/April 2017 issue of Popular Science, under the title “I Wish Someone Would Invent…Electricity-Generating Rain Gutters.”
