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A Solar Powered Socket... For The Window
A groundbreaking solar plug debuted by students at Dubai Design Week
We're now a little closer to plugging our devices directly into the sun, thanks to a fun student project that showed at the Dubai Design Week Global Grad Show exhibition.
Kyuho Song and Boa Oh, graduate students from the Samsung Art and Design Institute in Seoul, brightened a lot of people's day with the functioning prototype of Window Socket, a window mounting outlet.
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Enter a caption (optional)The socket adheres to the glass with a suction ring, and the palm sized solar panels charge the plug's integrated battery. It can be plugged into while mounted in the window or charged up and used later. As Kyuho Song told Business Insider, the current Window Socket prototype holds about 1,000 mAh, takes five to eight hours to fully charge, and can offer up to 10 hours of power. That's about enough to run a 60-watt light for ~20 hours, but not enough to re-juice cellphones quite yet… an iPhone needs almost triple that, and they keep getting hungrier!
Even with the prototype's limitations, the Window Socket would already be a great addition to locations without easy electricity or enough outlets. I can imagine multiple places I'd want to park one permanently, like a garage window, in a car, or on a boat.
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Enter a caption (optional)The team hopes to continue increasing battery capacity in the next iteration—with this kind of success under their belts, the chances look good.
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It’s a clever concept, but there’s no way it will run a lightbulb for 20 hours. That 1,000 mAh is not an amount of energy, it’s an amount of current for an amount of time. If it’s like a lot of portable power banks, its battery operates at about 3.7 V. 1,000 mAh is one Amp-hour, times 3.7 volts yields 3.7 watt-hours, which would run a 60W lightbulb for 3.7 minutes. A smartphone uses way, way less power than a lightbulb, and nowhere near 180 watts. I’d be surprised if I could find a laptop that used that much power, even at peak; most of them around in the low tens of watts.
in their defence as well a 60W bulb is the old kind of bulbs that in majority of countries are banning over the next couple of years, therefore most bulbs that will be used will be 6-8W LED bulbs
Thank you for doing the math before I did. I can't believe anyone would believe this is possible, let alone publish a whole article about it.
I's a conceptual design, although the functionality might not become reality, it is still a good design in artistic sence.
Also, charge time on this is off. That panel looks like it supplys 1 watt @ 12 volts. To charge a 1000 mAh battery, that's going to be ~12 hours of PEAK sunlight.
HAHA! I saw this on Yank.. design (sorry for the heresy) years ago and I commented why this is not a good idea. However I'm glad to see that someone believe in their idea to really keep on working and make a functional prototype!
I'll also add that those same concept images have been around since beginning 2014.
I can't believe Core77 is posting this.
I wanted to suggest a quick rule of thumb for how to gauge relative power consumption between products: think of how hot it gets!
Unless you're charging a battery or doing some other form of work, all the energy turns into heat. A light bulb (60 Watts power) gets so hot that you can't touch it. A cell phone (1-5 Watts) can be held indefinitely without a problem.
(palm slapping forehead)