When traveling to remote areas, charging your phone or tablet can be quite a hassle. But the portable solar charger SunJack, which was created by Harold Tan, can make this problem go away. The solar charger is also a great emergency kit addition for off-the-grid travel. SunJack is very portable, as it folds up to the size of an iPad. The creator will also be donating a part of the sales to help give the villagers in Papua New Guinea healthy, access to non-toxic lighting, since in these areas the people still use lighting that is quite hazardous.
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A few years ago, the company Rawlemon designed a spherical lens solar generator, which works better to capture solar energy than a regular solar panel array, and looks much better. The original Rawlemon spherical lens solar generator was created by a Barcelona designer and architect André Broessel of Beta Torics. The system basically uses a large glass ball that is filled with water to concentrate the sun’s energy onto a PV panel. In this way the suns energy is concentrated by up to 10,000 times. The ball can also be rotated and includes a tracking system, meaning that energy collection is maximized throughout the day. However, the design has some serious drawbacks, such as weight of the water-filled ball, which can’t really be supported by most roofs. Another drawback is the problem of producing the glass balls of sufficient quality and size.
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