Personal windpower makes your gadgets go
Now that we don't need to plug into the wall for power, why are we always recharging our phones, iPods, and other portable gadgets from home?
That's the thinking behind the Hymini -- a device that collects solar and wind power, so you can charge your portable electronics any time, anywhere. Just leave it someplace sunny, or strap it on the front of your bike, and your Hymini will power up and be good to go
Plus, for those times when you're traveling all day -- in and out of airpots, without any access to the bountiful power-generating resources of Mother Nature -- you can still plug it into the wall. Granted, plugging this into the wall instead of the gadget you need to charge seems a little redundant, but I suppose you could look at it like a backup battery.
In any case, if this sounds like fun, it can soon be yours for about $50.
[via Core77]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-04-2007 @ 1:18PM
PaulN said...
But...not affordable at all. At $0.10/kWh a $50 device is 500 kWh worth of power. Meanwhile, an ipod or cell phone has about a 700mAh battery (at ~3.6V). Multiply those two and the device has a 2.52Wh battery, so that means it would take about (500,000*60% / 2.52) = 120,000 charge cycles to break even (Energy Star chargers are only 60% efficient). Now the real problems start. This device uses an internal 1200mAh battery to store charge. Lithium batteries degrade capacity over time, so you really only expect about 4 years before the cell is dead. 4 years is only 1460 days, so unless you're going to charge a device 8 times a day, you'll never break even. It gets worse: that $50 is probably just for the hymini part, which is just the battery and wind turbine. Solar collectors are separate, and you'd probably want all 4 of them because they're kind of wimpy at 140mA each.
Given the long, long payback just in terms of money, I have to wonder about the carbon footprint of the plastics and silicon processing that go into making this and if you stacked that up against the amount of power a typical ipod user would actually consume in the life of the device, I bet it comes out net negative.
I like the idea, but it's not practical at this kind of price point. If you buy it, it's a toy. This "green math" can be tricky business. :-/
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