Voltaic Generator: When Convenience Goes Green
Remember the days when "going green" was a huge inconvenience? Even today, many people still believe that making an effort to conserve energy will always have a negative impact on quality of life. While this is true in some cases, green technologies are improving with each passing day and we’re fast-approaching a time where conservation will be trendy again. Green isn’t just for hippies anymore. Take the Voltaic Generator by Voltaic Systems, for example. There will come a time when all laptop bags will tout solar-cell technology and this spring you can get yourself ahead of the pack. The Voltaic Generator features an integrated 14.7 watt solar panel and a built-in battery pack that can hold enough juice to fully charge a standard laptop battery after a day in the sun. In fact, it’s one of the first bags of its kind with a solar panel powerful enough to charge a laptop. It doesn’t end with laptops, though. Voltaic includes a variety of common adapters for use with phones and other handheld devices.The bag itself is big enough to hold a 17" MacBook Pro or Sony AR-series, and is manufactured from 100% recycled materials. Forget for a minute that by using this bag you’re conserving energy and therefore helping the environment and sticking it to Big Oil; you’re packing a device that lets you easily juice up your gear on the go. It even sports an integrated indicator light in the handle that shows you when the panels are working. The Voltaic Generator will set you back $600 when it becomes available in the spring, but all things considered that’s not a terrible price point. Now if only Louis made something like this…
[Via Bornrich]
Sorry, but when did oil run our laptop batteries?
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Maybe it’s not oil (but it might be), but I’m pretty sure your laptop battery started running on carbon fuel the moment you plugged it into your wall to recharge. Or nuclear power. Unless you happen to live completely off the grid or are completely fed by wind turbines or something, and then that comment doesn’t apply to you.
ANYWAY, the point of my comment: don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome idea. Stuff like this is how green will catch on (you’re hearing that from a person who is one of those “quality-of-life” types), and it will do so by adding features, not taking them away. BUT, I’m a little leary of spending $600 on a bag that will now be more fragile than the laptop within it. The picture looks like it’s got a metal frame to it, so I assume these are “old-fashioned” flat glass cells?
That being said, fantastic first step, and I hope that people who can afford this thing buy lots of them so that the technology will have the capital to develop further.
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