Solar Clothes That Can Charge Your Phone!

A fatal flaw in all smartphones (and other tech) is that they have to be plugged into something to be charged. I say “flaw”, but really it’s more of an inconvenience – technology is great – except when the battery dies and you’ve forgotten your charger at home. Oh, there are all kinds of convenient chargers out there for your car, etc., but sometimes you have no access to a charger or an outlet to plug said charger into. And then all the technology in the world is useless to you. While we may not always have access to a charger or a wall outlet, most all of us have access to clothes and sunlight, and there are companies out there that have been hard at work designing clothing that will use solar and kinetic energy to power your smartphones.

While they still definitely have a long way to go before completion, they have designed some prototypes which are worthy of mentioning. A company called Solar Fiber has been hard at work creating photovoltaic fibers in a yarn form which stretches through clothing to convert sunlight to electrical energy which could later in theory power a smartphone or other device. They’ve already developed a shawl which shows exactly how much energy is being converted.

Another company, Wearable Solar, has created a dress and a jacket which converts the sun’s rays into usable energy. They each have a solar layer which can be opened when the sun is shining and closed when it’s not. They claim that a half hour in the sun wearing the clothing gives enough energy to charge a smartphone up to 50%. Naturally, it can be assumed that a full hour in the sun would completely charge the device.

Do you think there will come a day when most all of our clothing will be solar-enabled? Would you like it if your devices could be charged via solar energy? Let us know your thoughts regarding this story in the comments section below!

[Image via TheCreatorsProject]

SOURCE: The Guardian