Designer and inventor extraordinaire Knut Karlsen recently unveiled an inspired approach to portable power that can’t be beat for its elegant simplicity: a prototype battery capable of charging itself when exposed to sunshine. His slick set of SunCat C-cells are wrapped in flexible photovoltaic panels and will slowly recharge when left to bask in the sun – just like a cat.
The following description is from the designer:
| Prototypes
‘During my research for my diploma I was in touch with scientists at IFE that experimented with the production of flexible solar cells. They where kind enough to send me some samples in the right dimensions that i could use for the prototypes (full set at flickr):
I had some older NiMH rechargeable batteries that I glued the flexible Photo Voltaic (PV) cells onto. The PV cells are rated at 1.8V and the batteries are 1.5V so they match quite well.
Half glued you can see the really shiny polymer substrate backside of the PV cell. The crude written text says: 3×0,6V B: 13.411.09 Which I guess is the voltage and a batch number.
Using a conductive silver pen and some flat wires from a broken canon lens I made an ok connection to the PV cell.
This setup is in fact a (quite weak) trickle charger. It is not ideal, but really convenient. A second version would have some electronics (to check when full) and capacitors to charge the batteries more efficiently, but the battery would then be smaller if it all needs to fit within a C-cell battery.
The sun did not shine today, in fact it was snowing. But I’ll sure let them hang around in my window and take some more pictures when the sun shines.’
For further information visit: blog.bareknut.no.
