Wind-powered phone-charger coming to market?
Designer gauging interest
Gotwind, the organisation behing the wind-powered mobile phone recharger prototypes Orange will be spinning at this weekend's Glastonbury gathering, has said it may put the product into production - if there's a demand for it.
Getwind's Orange wind-powered phone charger
The Orange wind chargers were developed by Gotwind's Ben Jandrell, who designs and builds his own wind turbines as "a hobby". However, so great has been the interest in the Orange-sponsored prototypes after Register Hardware covered the gadgets last week that Ben's considering taking the project a stage further.
"We are assessing the demand for a wind charger before we commit to production," he told us today.
Interested? Then register your name and email address at the Gotwind.org website.
COMMENTS
Title
Well yes, this would be an ideal solution.
Photovoltaic cells are expensive, cost per watt, and this would increase the retail price obviously.
It's a case of assessing what folk are prepared to pay for a final product really.
20-30-40- 50 pounds or more, I'm not sure at this stage.
You can copy and paste the link below to vote in my poll. (I don't quite understand why links aren't allowed)
http://gotwind.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~89.asp
Ben.
Why not combine with some solar cells?
I recently invested in one of these: http://www.solartechnology.co.uk/products/Solar_chargers/freeloader.asp
It works like a dream when it's sunny, but it's not so good in cloudy weather! Surely some some clever dick could combine the two and build a product that could take advantage of both sources of renewable power? =)
Is this green?
Definitely not green - assuming the picture hasn't been altered I'd say it was a nice orange and black. Not sure where you're getting the green tinge from.
Already at the cloakroom
"But how much energy does it cost to make" "is it REALLY green" etc
There's a certain cleak logic to these posters, but this card is played everytime someone tries to bring an innovative green solution to market.
If a product costs a lot of power to make, it generates Co2. But it will recoup some or all of that in it's workign life, and at least the effort is being made to create the product - and who knows, it the demand is there, more money will be spent on improving efficiency and lowering costs - including power required.
So what say, when you wheel out your naysaying to any green attempts, you try not to sound like you're whingeing that people shouldn't even bother?
That'd be great, thanks
MikeC
Bing!
"The problem with wind or solar is that
wind and sun are untrustworthy while
most people walk and drive a great deal in a day"
- And therein lies the solution to the problem - while driving stick in on the car roof.. while walking... run and stick it on your head!
