Inhabitat reader Raven tells us about the Solar Plant – a flowerpot-shaped charger that uses the sun’s rays to charge all of your portable electronic gadgets. This clever design from Ku Bon-Seop of South Korea features a set of solar panels that are mounted on the top of the charger. Just like real plants these panels convert light into renewable energy by utilizing the mighty power of the sun. The design is clean and simple, and its portability makes it easy to keep your gadgets powered wherever and whenever you find the need for some extra juice.
I know you are a design blog, and not an engineering blog, but it would be very good if you included the following in your post:
The solar panel surface area needed to supply the energy to charge a macbook is about six square feet in direct sunlight, so outside. A surface that small will not even charge your mobile telephone in direct sunlight, let alone inside. All these gadgets for solar power inside are terribly inefficient compared with putting the solar panels outside!
I know that you care most about the aesthetics of a charger that looks like a plant in a pot, but please: mention the fact it *will not work*. Only if laptops get twenty times more efficient, and solar cells get twenty times more powerful, and we live in glass houses will something like this work.
And using CO2: the sunlight is *used* to break down CO2 to use as a building material for the plant itself! There is no energy in CO2! What you are writing about in this post is complete and utter impossible nonsense. Please ignore green inventions that are as effective as a rock.
Cool thing! Where to buy?
Where to buy?
I know you are a design blog, and not an engineering blog, but it would be very good if you included the following in your post:
The solar panel surface area needed to supply the energy to charge a macbook is about six square feet in direct sunlight, so outside. A surface that small will not even charge your mobile telephone in direct sunlight, let alone inside. All these gadgets for solar power inside are terribly inefficient compared with putting the solar panels outside!
I know that you care most about the aesthetics of a charger that looks like a plant in a pot, but please: mention the fact it *will not work*. Only if laptops get twenty times more efficient, and solar cells get twenty times more powerful, and we live in glass houses will something like this work.
And using CO2: the sunlight is *used* to break down CO2 to use as a building material for the plant itself! There is no energy in CO2! What you are writing about in this post is complete and utter impossible nonsense. Please ignore green inventions that are as effective as a rock.