Orange goes green for festival phone-fuelling
Wind-powered charger prototyped
Eco-warriors planning to head down to the Glastonbury mud festival - sorry, music festival - later this month will be able to re-charge their mobile phones in an almost entirely carbon-neutral fashion.
Orange's wind-powered phone charger:
UK climate friendly
Orange today launched a prototype wind-powered charger capable of delivering a constant supply of green juice despite "the unpredictable English climate". How? The turbine charges a battery, and it's from that power pack that the phone's own battery is charged.
It is, of course, a variation of one on humanity's oldest devices, the windmill, though this time kitted out in suitable, sponsor-friendly colour. The windmil weighs a mere 150g - let's hope it's capable of being anchored against strong gusts - and is compact enough to be tucked into a rucksack.
Orange's wind-powered phone charger:
sorted out for Es and... er... whizz
The idea is you plant your windmill then go off and down to the groove - and probably high on something else. On retiring for the night, you plug in your run-down mobile which is ready to party again the following morning.
COMMENTS
The Future is Green,
get wind of it.
LOL, was on your site before or after getting involved with Orange? Nice ideas Ben!
So
A J Stiles; not wishing to sound like I'm down wiv ver kids, but these new mobile things are so small and light, you can wear them around your neck on a lanyard. With the added benefit that you can take photos of the people you get naked with. And publish them on t'interweb or do live streaming.
Ben; how can I get one if I'm not intending to go to Glastonbury but to the much more divine Roskilde one instead? I can't see anything on your site about how to get one!
More info here
Thanks for the comments.
I designed and made this prototype for Orange.
You can view more details on my website
www.gotwind.org
What else can it power!
I like to backpack and would love to be able to bring one of these things around with me. If only it could power some sort of cooling device, oh to have a cold drink while miles away from civilization would be great!!!!
They're taking WHAT?!
You mean to tell me people actually take mobile phones to pot fest ..... er ..... pop festivals?
I despair of this generation, really I do.
In my day, we may well have dreamed that some sort of two-way radio might be a useful thing to take to a festival. No doubt there were even some folk resourceful enough to have improvised devices for senselessly wasting 9-volt batteries using naught but old tobacco tins, Veroboard, coils painstakingly wound on ferrite cores with the aid of a Qualcast Clipper Double Pinion hand-drill and parts scavenged out of broken wireless sets. Some of which might even have succeeded in propagating a signal further than the unassisted voice -- for just a few seconds before the batteries became irretrievably spent.
Besides which, all decent festival frolics used to involve getting naked. And where on earth would you put a mobile phone then, eh?
