Solar Handbags And Solar Back Packs

In 2005 several companies introduced the first crop of solar backpacks onto the market at once. They were immediately popular among the gadget set – several coming with innovative features that integrated charging and switching between devices such as iPods, cellular phones and PDAs. If we are, indeed, heading toward a future with wearable computers, making the power station wearable too doesn’t seem very far-fetched.

The first generation of solar powered backpack devices tended to be a bit bulky, usually with rigid panels and Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries to store extra charge. Very popular with students, the bags themselves also had to be rather sturdy and able to hold several books while rugged enough to be dragged and dropped.

The next generation of solar backpack came mere months later and was equipped with nearly twice the charging potential (12 watts vs. 6) and flexible panels. The flexible amorphous slilicon (a-Si) materials, which were originally developed for aerospace applications, were actually a bit less expensive to produce and many people preferred this for comfort and aesthetic reasons.

Such bags almost always came with some cool extras. One model would automatically put your iPod on pause when you had a phone call come in. Another featured a small LED flashlight (torch) that was always charged while, yet another allowed you to pick the colour of the bag as well as the colour of the panels attached to it. A truly clever idea with very good student appeal, these backpack solar charger bags flew off store shelves the following gift-giving season.

However, as wireless internet (WiFi or WiMax) has become increasingly ubiquitous, people are giving up their desktops for laptop units since they can use them anywhere. As a result, people are interested din bags that are capable of powering a laptop. The first seasons worth of offerings were simply not powerful enough to handle the typical laptop that draws between 60-75watts of power. Though many of the first solar bags had connections for powering USB devices, the computers themselves would have to wait.

Current incarnations of the solar cell backpack are more powerful, and use battery backup to store up enough power to run your laptop for several hours. Some particularly wily devices actually include video players and LCD screens that allow you to turn your bag into a movie theatre and back again without even bothering to plug in to an outlet.

In the future, expect more devices such as the solar backpack or solar handbag to function not only as a mobile charger, but as a docking station for all the devices you wear on your person all day long to get together and network while they’re charging up. Next up? How about the solar powered bathing suit?