Even though winter isn’t generally known for sun, a beefy array of Christmas lights will always run up your electricity bill.  These solar powered lights might be a great alternative for those on a budget but not willing to cut out the holiday cheer.  However, the cost of this expensive item may really  outweigh the potential savings on your electric bill.  On sale now for $65 per 102 light strand.

Unlike standard outdoor holiday lights that must be tethered to an electric source, these solar powered lights can be strung anywhere in your yard. A small solar panel stakes into the ground up to 7′ away from the light strand and powers 102 bright LEDs for up to nine hours after an eight-hour charge. Seven different light patterns dance along the strand in succession, or you can select your favorite sequence to flash continuously or have the lights provide steady illumination with the touch of a button. The solar panel gathers moderate or direct sunlight during the daytime and automatically turns the lights on at dusk and off at dawn. The 32′ 9″-long strand provides enough slack to adorn trees, railings, or lampposts. The LEDs are rated for 10,000 hours of operation.

[via RandomGoodStuff]

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With Solar Power being about the greenest energy around, it still takes way too long.  These new bags from Mascotte Industrial Associates of Hong Kong use DSSC (Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells) technology to effectively store and convert solar power so your can charge your gadgets on your own time.

I really like the utilitarian approach to these bags but can’t help but think about the restless anxiety of waiting around for this bag to fully charge.  No word yet on pricing or availability but if your looking for a new bag anyway you may want to wait on these.

Read

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If the ReNu solar powered iPhone docking system piqued your interest then listen up, because Regen is at it again.   The REVERB is a giant speaker that stands 35-inches high and can be powered by, you guessed it, the sun’s solar rays.  Up top is an Apple 30-pin dock, 2x USB ports, 1x USB input for charging the unit and a 4-inch LCD to display all the track info your eco heart desires.  Speaker wise were looking at a set of stereo drivers and a 6-inch subwoofer.  A full charge in direct sunlight outdoors takes 20 hours, while inside takes 40, which produces 4.5 hours of play time at full volume or 12 hours at ‘normal’ volume.

The REVERB will be available this coming April for a mere $2,299, but you can preorder one now for $500 down.

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The folks out at Dell have given us a pretty sweet gadget to check out.  Now, chances are, you’ve heard about a LOT of solar powered whatnot, especially right here.  And some of it is pretty strange.  Solar powered jackets, solar powered cars…well, now Dell’s going to bring you what may be the strangest solar powered device of all.

The solar powered parking lot.

I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen–Dell has put together a series of solar panel-laden paviliions in its parking lot designed to provide not only shade to the cars beneath in the hot sun, but also to take that sun and convert it into electrical energy by which employees can charge, at no cost to them, their plug-in hybrids and full-on electric vehicles.

The equivalent of free gas is a pretty nifty perk, and the crew out at Dell has to be feeling some love off of this one.

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If you’ve ever found yourself out hiking in the back end of beyond and come up against an emergency–a broken leg, a lost map, a witch chasing you and your friends, a family of inbred mountain people who think your girlfriend looks tastier than a twelve-course buffet, you know what I’m getting at–without a charged cell phone, then you’re going to love what I’ve got here.

It’s called the Solio Emergency Charger, and for $60, it’ll give you a little extra punch of power that fits in a backpack.  It’s a slightly downsized for travel version of the Solio charger, and though it takes twenty hours in direct sunlight to achieve maximum charge, it still offers that little extra spark of juice when you need it most.  It comes with USB adapter, charging cable, 12v adapter and universal tip cable to make sure all your gadgets get their bump.

It’s a pretty smart idea, even if twenty hours is a pretty long time and represents almost two full days you’d have to spend in the woods waiting for it to get full charge.  By then, the inbred mountain people will have already finished your girlfriend and have started wondering if you served with mint would make a better dessert or appetizer.

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Hey ladies–got a question specifically for you today.  How do you feel about the thought of a solar powered purse?

This isn’t some weird environmentalist joke–this is actually a purse that generates electricity from a layer of dye-sensitized solar cells.  Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, cheap solar cells that can be built into most any article of clothing relatively inexpensively.

It’s not that they work really well, though–you’ll have to leave your handbag in the sun for four to five hours before you can generate juice sufficient to recharge your cell phone, but this is one of those cases where you can just sort of shrug and say, hey, free power.

The bags are a little on the pricey side, though.  They’re looking to bow in the $100-300 range, which is only slightly more expensive than your typical handbag. Plus it offers the whole solar-power option, which is awesome no matter how you slice it.

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Solar powered house, anyone?

Anyone looking for the house of the future should take note of the Solar Decathalon currently taking place at the National Mall in Washington DC.  This event brings together college students from around the world to build a house, no larger than eight hundred square feet, that runs entirely on solar power.  Everything from hot water heaters to power had to come from the sun, and the resulting houses are downright impressive.

Team Ontario, for instance, built what amounts to a giant glass cube that produces fully double its own power needs, allowing the homeowner to make a little extra cash selling the power back to the grid.  And frankly, they’ll need that little extra cash; these houses have an approximate street value of between $300,000 and $500,000.

If you’re out in the area, check it out.  The show runs through Saturday.

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LG is coming out with an amazing new gadget that’ll quite possibly change the way you think about summer: the solar-powered e-reader.

This is actually a whole lot of amazing in one sentence, so I’ll try and break it down into more manageable chunklets for you.  One, an e-reader that runs entirely on solar power is an exciting development.  Reading a book outside in the spring–or in some cases, summer–sun has long been a popular activity, but now you can take a library outside with you and have your choice when you finally settle in under that tree and set out to read.

Two, this is one of the first e-readers to be powered by the sun, thus every other e-reader is now going to have a significant bit of competition on its hands.  None of the other e-readers are powered by free sunlight, you know.  And buying batteries over and over, or paying the power company to recharge batteries, will always lose out to free recharge.  Every time.

Three, a solar panel capable of powering a gadget by itself, and still be portable?  This might be the start of something new and different in the whole solar panel industry.  It might take an entire roof’s worth of solar panels to make a five thousand watt generator, but one panel running an e-reader?  That’s interesting.

The LG solar e-reader represents several significant strides forward, and hopefully, we can get our hands on them fairly soon.

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Brando has made a “why didn’t I think of that” gadget in the form of their solar powered bluetooth headset.  Providing infinite standby time under direct sunlight, you can also charge it via USB through your computer or AC wall plug.  You can even buy two of them and use them simultaneously thanks to their stereo matching capabilities.  Why would you want to do that I wonder?  It would definitely look weird, but you’d at least have sides of your head displaying a bluetooth headset so you don’t look like you’re talking to yourself.  On sale now for $67 a piece.

[via Ubergizmo]

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World War 2 buffs and sustainable survivalists rejoice as there’s a new bag in town.  Actually it’s rather old.  Using a German backpack and a satchel from the last World War over 50 years ago, Vancouver BC company KILLA claims that the durable fabric will last you another 50 years and hopefully through the next World War.

Made in an absolute limited quality (only 20 units of both bags produced each year), these bags have been retrofitted with solar panels for storing the sun’s energy for use later.  Each bag also contains iPod controls that KILLA partnered with QIO Systems to use their Paniq devices to control any iPod or Bluetooth enabled module.  Sounds very cool indeed.

No info on pricing at this time.

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It might sound hard to believe, but one of the best sources on earth for solar power is located right in your backyard.  Or possibly your front yard.

It sounds outlandish, but the more you think about it, the more you realize it has more truth than you think.  The object in question? A tree.

Trees, as it turns out, generate as much as 200 mV of power and do so reliably.  This is, of course, orders of magnitude less than your standard double AA battery, meaning you’d need the equivalent of an entire old-growth forest to power up a small flashlight.

However, there is a device called a boost converter that collects these ultra small voltages, and converts them into usable power.  This isn’t a very efficient process, and it won’t run a household current anytime soon.  A few hundred trees might be able to continuously pump juice into, say, a battery while you sleep for use in the morning.  But it does represent significant possibilities, and maybe even a really good reason to cut back on some logging operations.

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Solar Panels are just one wave of the future, but their cost has long negated their existence, especially in 3rd world countries.  Now a set of teenagers hailing from Nepal say they have invented a solar panel that is made from human hair.

The hair infused solar panels can produce up to 9V, which is enough juice to recharge a set of batteries or a mobile phone.  Total cost to produce the panels are about $40, which is about half the cost of today’s solar panels on the market that are crafted from silicon.  If they enter mass production the teens think that cost could be cut in half to $20.

While the hair’s conductive abilities will eventually run out, apparently replacing it doesn’t require any special knowledge and means those with little to no education can service the panels themselves.

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If you’ve shelled out the several thousand dollars required these days to get a solar array installed at your house, then you know that it’s all about the light level that lets you figure out just how much power you’re generating.  But the old Mark One Eyeball isn’t exactly the best candidate for figuring out how much sun is shining at any given time.

Enter the Lightgauge, from Lighthouse Solar in Boulder, Colorado.  The Lightgauge is a wall-mounted device that tracks energy produced and energy used in real-time, showing if there’s a surplus or a deficit created at any time.  Lighthouse has recently started including the Lightgauge in all of its solar panel systems.

When they say real-time, they mean it, too–shutting off a light causes the graph to dip towards equilibrium, on screen.

This is a pretty cool idea, frankly, and hopefully, Lightgauges will be part of everybody’s solar system these days.

[via Daily-camera.com]

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Another day another battery pack for the iPhone.  But wait, there’s more.  Much like the battery pack we saw from MotionTouch in July, Novothink is set to release their own version of the solar powered battery pack for the iPhone and iPod touch called the Surge.  And their claim to fame is that this is the first ever Apple-certified one.

But before you get too excited keep in mind it will take about 20 hours to fully charge its internal battery from the solar rays, so think of it as supplementary and not a replacement for standard wall charging.

On the back of the device, in addition to the solar panels are 4 LED lights to indicate the Surge’s level of charge and although they claim there is a 30-pin connector I can’t seem to find one in the pictures, though there is a mini USB port.  Those of you with the the EDGE iteration of the iPhone, or an iPod Touch Gen 1 are shit out of luck, since they’ve only built these to work with the newest of models.

The iPod Surge will be available this month for $70, while the iPhone Surge for the 3G and 3GS will be available sometime this fall for the same price.

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We’ve all been there at one time or another–just as you’re on your daily walk in the park, your iPod goes dead, or your digital camera runs out of juice, or something you’re carrying just can’t work up enough spark to, you know, work.

Enter the Free Loader, a highly portable device that allows you to recharge any of your portable devices anywhere the sun happens to be shining.

The device works by continually absorbing charge in a set of small onboard batteries.  From there, you can tap into the device’s accumulated power at any time to recharge your portable devices.  While you’re enjoying the iPod sound or making your phone calls or what have you, the Free Loader is continually recharging its OWN batteries, and holding that charge for as long as three months before it loses the charge.

You can actually get one of these right now over at ThinkGeek.com for the low price of fifty bucks.  It’s actually a great idea when you think about it, and you’ll never be without juice again.

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Remember Scosche’s solCHAT Bluetooth speaker phone?  It’s now on sale at select retailers for about $70.  In case you forgot, the solCHAT is like any other Bluetooth speakerphone, but includes a solar panel on its rear that enables it to recharge itself when placed into the sun.  Expect to get about 10 hours of talk time or 600 hours of standby time on a fully charged battery – that number can be increased of course by solar charging.  Scosche also includes a suction cup mount for windshield mounting as well as a car charger.

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So while we’ve seen solar powered chargers, we have yet to see the solar powered sleeve/case for the iPhone.  Recently announced from MotionTouch comes a “yet to be named” eco-friendly ambient light and solar charging sleeve for the iPhone 3G and 3Gs.  Specs aren’t all that defined but what we do know is that the sleeve will charge itself whether the phone is on or not, and that none of the iPhone’s features will be disabled when using said sleeve.  The back of the sleeve will have a solar panel but I question the design in that I really don’t think many people will want to leave their iPhone screen down all the time while the sleeve sucks up rays.  No word on pricing or availability as of now.

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It’s pretty few and far between that I hammer out a conference call while basking in the sun, but relaxing to some tunes poolside, that’s a whole different story.  Devotec’s solar powered Bluetooth speaker, the Solar Sound, houses a pair of 2 watt speakers, a rechargeable battery, a retractable 3.5mm headphone cord, a touch like display, a mic for calls and of course Bluetooth connectivity.  In the sun it takes about 12 hours or more to charge the battery, while an AC plug cuts that number into a third.  You can grab one now for $79.

What, no iPod dock?

[via ElectricPig]

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Growing up I was tasked with the chore of keeping my family’s pool clean and pristine.  I know, I shouldn’t complain that I had a swimming pool, but skimming the surface clean was not only a mind numbing task but a forearm one as well.  Enter the Solar Powered Pool Skimmer.  I know, I know, automated pool skimmers have been around for a while, but none so self sufficient.

Two solar panels charge the unit’s NiMH battery and at a full charge it should provide up to 8 hours of cleaning.  In the event of a gloomy or cloudy day, the unit will slow its cleaning speed to conserve battery life and when needed search for a sunny spot to recharge its battery.  If it gets clogged it can reverse suction and spit out what ever offending object is lodged in the system.  And to keep things extra squeaky clean it also houses two chlorine tablets that slowly dissolve as is navigates the pool.

[via Gizmag]

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Looking to be pretty comfortable in your kitchen area, Oregon Scientific’s solar powered weather station, the +Eco Clima Control will keep you alert to all things related to your immediate inside and outside world.  Now priced at $120 (originally it was $99) and set to release this fall, the Solar Powered Weather Station will operate for three months on an 8 hour initial charge.  Seems like a good gift right?

Full press release after the ‘leap’

Tualatin, OR – July 7, 2009 – Oregon Scientific announced today the release of the +ECO Clima Control weather station, the first in its innovative new line of energy-conserving electronics.  The +ECO product, operating with solar energy, offers essential timing and weather features while helping to reduce energy consumption and improve battery life.

The +ECO Clima Control is equipped with a built-in solar panel, and is powered by the sun.  It allows its users to monitor the current temperature and humidity in up to four locations within the home and outdoors, using remote wireless temperature and humidity sensors.  With only an 8-hour charge, the +ECO Clima Control will operate for up to three months before another charge is needed.

“We are excited to introduce our first solar-powered weather station into our ever-growing line of Oregon Scientific household products,” said Mike Prager, President of Oregon Scientific, US.  “We are committed to exploring alternative sources of energy to power our products, and will continue to look for new innovations to serve our consumers.”

In September, two additional solar-powered installments will be added to the +ECO line.  The first, the +ECO Solar Weather Station will monitor current indoor and outdoor weather temperatures, humidity and shows an iconic future weather forecast, as well as the precise Atomic time.  Second, the more compact +ECO Solar Weather Clock will monitor the current indoor and outdoor weather temperatures and humidity, as well the Atomic time.  Both products are equipped with detachable solar panels and remote wireless temperature and humidity sensors.

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