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Another twist on solar-powered charging (Green Gadget of the Week)

By | October 7, 2011, 3:03am PDT

Summary: Ray, a “socially developed” product available on the Quirky platform, can be moved around to catch maximum sunlight.

(This is the latest in a regular weekly series of spotlights on green technology that’s accessible to you and me. If you have a green technology or gadget to suggest for coverage, please send a note via my contact email.)

This week’s item is about a product that you can pre-order via the Quirky platform, but the catch is that you won’t actually get it until there are at least 2,000 of these products ordered. That’s the whole idea behind the Quirky “social development” platform.

The device is called Ray, and it is a solar-powered charger (yes, another one) for various mobile phones, digital music players and other electronic gadgets. The twist on this technology (pictured) is that you can suction-cup it to a window or tilt it on a little “kickstand” to grab maximum sunlight. When I wrote up this item, Ray carried a price of $39.99, and there were slightly more than 730 commitments for the product.

Ray includes a small solar panel and a USB port to attach your devices. The battery stores enough power to charge a mobile phone fully (although the write-up doesn’t which models). The anticipated size is 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches by 3 inches, although Quirky has a disclaimer saying the actual size might vary during production.

Past Green Gadgets of the Week:

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USB Port, Light-emitting Diode, Battery, Ray, Engineering, Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues.

Disclosure

Heather Clancy

Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I am also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I am covering in my blog.

Biography

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning business journalist with a passion for green technology and corporate sustainability issues. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In a past corporate life, Heather was editor of Computer Reseller News, where she was a featured speaker about everything from software as a service to IT security to mobile computing.

Heather started her journalism life as a business writer with United Press International in New York. She holds a B.A. in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and has a thing for Lewis Carroll.

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chomeioy1401-24379050583164344287649173473205 25th Nov
afjzho,ccelamzk12, aybxr.
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Such products make sense...
GrizzledGeezer 7th Oct
...for people who cannot easily charge their devices in "the wild". But there's nothing inherently "green" about them. Consider...

How much energy is required to build and distribute the charger? If it's not substantially less than the energy the charger will deliver over its lifespan -- and only in no-other-way-to-charge situations -- then it isn't "green".
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RE: Another twist on solar-powered charging (Green Gadget of the Week)
MrNamuro 18th Nov
I wonder if they could develop a similar device that could power up a San Diego junk removal truck. I can surely say that many people would be interested in getting their hands on such a device. What do you think? Is that possible? We need to solar power at a larger scale.
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qqomglp 75 xsd
chomeioy1401-24379050583164344287649173473205 25th Nov
afjzho,ccelamzk12, aybxr.

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