It’s easy to live with a few smudges on your smartphone’s display, but for devices like solar panels that are completely dependent on every last drop of light making it through, cleanliness is a top priority. And when you’ve thousands of solar panels
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There is nothing quite like that particular spark of creativity in a budding young mind. Sometimes, we do take a look at a particular concept or idea and say to ourselves, “Now why didn’t I think about that before?” I guess this particular pair of modified sunglasses would fall comfortably right into that particular category. Students from the Miami Ad School in San Francisco have come up with the idea of installing solar panels onto an iconic Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, enlisting the help of designer Sayalee Kaluskar to bring it to life, so to speak. This means each time you are out wearing the pair of Wayfarers, soaking up the sun, so too, will the solar panels on this bad boy.
The energy gathered by the solar panels will be able to come in handy down the road, especially when your smartphone or mobile device starts to run low on juice. In order to enjoy such a privilege, all you need to do is to detach the arms from the front frame of the sunglasses, where one end of it will feature a Lightning charger – making it a snap for you to plug it into your iPhone. Right now, this is but a concept, although we would not be surprised to see it manufactured on a large scale down the road, and not necessarily carrying an existing brand name for the pair of sunnies.
Shama-Shades Are Solar-Powered Sunnies original content from Ubergizmo. 
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We’ve seen plenty of wearables with solar panels built into them, but how about the most obvious wearable: sunglasses? That’s exactly what these Ray-Ban “Shama” concept sunglasses are. The temples (arms) of the sunglasses capture sunlight throughout the day, and you plug them into your iPhone when the sun goes down. One of the temples […]
Conventional wisdom in the northern hemisphere is to face solar panels south so they get the most light all day. Architects and panel installers implement this approach all the time, especially on homes. But a new study indicates that panels facing west may actually get more juice from the sun, and at more convenient times.
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A new patent application published by the USPTO this week (via AppleInsider) indicates that Apple has been thinking about how to practically deliver the benefits of solar power to mobile devices, without requiring clumsy and gigantic external converters. Solar charging is still fairly fringe when it comes to the general gadget-using population, but Apple’s patent, filed originally in 2012, looks like it could provide a way to make getting your power from the sun something that’s generally palatable within a few years’ time.
The system in Apple’s patent is a power management array for accepting both power adapter and solar power direct from gathering devices or traditional mains-based chargers. So in other words, you could plug in your MagSafe or iPad/iPod adapter, or alternatively hook a MacBook or other piece of hardware directly to a solar panel with a simple cord. There’s also a means for accepting both inputs at the same time, according to the patent, for a power balance that would likely charge your device quicker but with more economical use of juice from the grid.
The key to this patent is that the system described is both composed of readily available power management techniques achievable with existing hardware, and; able to be built using componentry that takes up very little space, making it theoretically possible to integrate it into existing device designs without much modification. Both of those indicate that Apple could build this into products sooner, rather than later, should it choose to go that route.
I’d still expect this to take a while to come to fruition, if it does at all, but it is one way that Apple could explore the possibility of expanding device battery life in non-traditional usage situations, like while out and about in nature and separated from any mains access. The key will be whether this can be done without making any sacrifices to battery or device size, and that seems to be where Apple is focusing its R&D efforts around solar, according to this application at least.
Those long dark stretches of highway out in the middle of nowhere without any streetlights might soon be a thing of the past thanks to the engineers and designers at the Netherlands-based Kaal Masten. They’ve created the Spirit, a standalone solar-powered streetlight that gets all the energy it needs from the sun, so it can be installed and provide lighting anywhere—even remote locations without access to power grids.
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Hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey have been known to stay aloft for hours on end using a strategic mix of flapping and gliding. Robotic birds can do the same, except that they can’t replenish their batteries by snatching a mid-flight snack. However, researchers at the University of Maryland are perfecting a set of flexible solar cell wings that could allow flying bots to stay aloft indefinitely, as long as they get a peek at the sun every so often.
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Solar power is fantastic, sure. But while the tech behind solar panels is zooming forward
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Though they’ve made clear that the decision to sell solar panels to the masses on a market-by-market basis, the results are already clear: IKEA is aiming to make solar energy mainstream. If there’s one company that can take this green push to the market in a way that’s not-quite-cheap but certainly not overpriced, it’s IKEA. […]
Get excited, Earthlings who like the Earth: IKEA just announced a new program to sell energy-saving solar panels in each of its 17 UK stores. This means that with a little bit more effort than it takes to purchase a set of Billy bookcases, Brits can be doing their part to bring the world a little closer to sustainable energy.
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