I am always frustrated that I don’t have a solar powered laptop, but with the Powerfilm solar battery charger, I can always keep my digital camera’s batteries full. Designed to charge either two or four AA batteries at a time, the Powerfilm solar battery charger takes between four and eight hours to charge a drained battery.
It is designed to be compact, and is lighter than keeping a second set of AA batteries on your person. The Powerfilm solar battery charger is available now and will set you back around $130 USD.
The only issue I have with this device is the cost. If it was around twenty or thirty dollars, it would make a strong case for its usefulness because I could by a whole lot of non-rechargeable AA’s for the same price, and while I do enjoy helping the environment, I don’t think it should make us all poor to do so.
A group called Solar Impulse is working hard on a solar power airplane that could (in the future) dramatically reduce the fuel needed for commercial air travel. The zero-emission plane can only hold one person in it’s prototype design, but they are hoping that advancements in solar cell technology and battery storage technology that the concept could carry over to more useful passenger jets that would hold up to 300 people.
Check out this video to get some more details…
Even as a single passenger plane it’s an interesting idea, but even before it’s viable for commercial airliners I think it could be more easily adapted to smaller personal aircraft. There are a LOT of smaller airplanes out there that could seriously benefit from this sort of technology. Heck, I’m hoping to get my pilot’s licence at some point (hopefully before I’m retired, but who knows…), and would LOVE it if I could get a little solar powered plane comparable in size to a Cessna 172 or something similar. Planes cost enough without all the fuel, especially these days.
I’ll be watching these guys to see what sort of progress they make with their future test flights and advancements. If anyone catches someone building 2-4 passenger planes that run on solar before I do, drop me a line!
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