Dance to the music, and charge your cellphone

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 26 June 2008 07:59

Business IT - Technology

A dance-powered phone charger is just one of several devices developed by a partnership between UK cellular operator, Orange, and renewable energy company Gotwind to solve the problem of participants in multi-day outdoor music festivals keeping their cellphones charged.

At the 2007 Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, UK, Orange and Gotwind trialled a prototype personal wind-driven generator designed for tent-top installation . This year they have upscaled that with the seven metre high 'Recharge Pod' that uses both wind and solar generated electricity to charge multiple phones simultaneously. It is claimed to be able to charge up to 100 per hour.

The downside of this is that festival goers have to leave their phones in the Recharge Pod. But Gotwind and Orange will trial another personal charging solution at the festival:  an armband mounted unit which uses the wearer's movements to generate electricity to charge the phone. But it seems that the wearer will need to be dancing to make it work.

According to Orange: "As the user moves their arms along to the music – a specially designed system of weights and magnets, similar to that found in kinetic energy watches, creates an electrical current which provides a top-up of charge to a storage battery...The charger stores dance-generated power in the reservoir battery, ready for when they return to their tent each night to recharge their phone." Orange has given no indication of how much dancing you'd need to do to charge the average phone.

Orange plans to showcase the charger with an interactive Dance Charging Man who will help recharge mobile phones during the festival through the power of dance. He will only require one form of payment…a dance with the person who needs their phone re-charged.