I’ve chosen two products:
The first one is the NoonSolar bag. It’s an elegant collection, fabrics that reminds us nature, bio-degradable, toxic-free (and the batteries??) and the solar panels can be recycled.

But the time to charge batteries is 6 to 8 hours !

The cost goes from 330$ of Willow model, to $497 of Sawyer model.


The second company is called VoltaicSystems. Their products are backpacks and computer bags. They are less trendy or more  geek. They have more models. We will highlight the "Generator" model that allows recharging a portable computer. Costs goes from $249 to $599 for the model that allows recharging a Laptop.

But we have to take into account some aspects.

Recharging a mobile telephone or an iPod is not the most expensive item of our electrical bill or of our CO2 footprint. The manufacturing of these products, the transport and future recycle are going to generate too much CO2 than the one we can safe recharging our favourite gadget with these bags.

And if you love outdoor trekking and mountains and you have planned to be some days far away from an electrical plug, perhaps it can be of our interest, but I don’t think that even in those conditions it will be useful, because we will not want to charge too much weigth and probably we will not have enogh bars (coverage).

In the case of laptops, I have to confess that some time ago I was interested by a solar charging station, but I discarded for two reasons. The first one is the cost; to have a reasonable charging capacity the cost was prohibited, more expensive than the portable, and on the other hand, the recharging time for my battery required more than 8 hours , but the battery only lasts for 4 hours.

In resume:

• I think it’s more a fashion than functionality.
• I don’t think it’s an environmental advantage.
• I think it’s an interesting initiative from the point of view of raising of awareness, as well as promoting new sources of energy, that will allow us in a future to have gadgets that don’t need batteries, or that bring batteries that need less resources, less toxic and less pollution.