We’ve all heard of solar power and maybe you even have a few gadgets the run on it (at the very least, you probably have a calculator sitting around) but have you ever heard of plant power? A team of researchers decided to look into skipping sunlight and draw energy straight from plants and created the Plant Lamp, an LED lamp that runs on the power of plants.

The system was developed by a team at the Universidad de Ingenieria y Tecnologia. The set up consists of a plant (of course), an irrigation system and an energy generation system that is capable of turning plant nutrients into electric energy. It’s sort of like what the Matrix could have been if the robots were vegans.

As cool as this sounds, it’s still very early in the development and the light, though bright, only runs for about two hours which isn’t a lot of time but for communities, such as those in the Amazon where it is being tested, that have a lot of vegetation but a poor electrical grid, this technology can be a boon. Soon your house plants may be able to do more for you than turn brown and die.