Sustainable Energy

Get a Charge on the Go

Dec 17, 2009

This backpack is one of a line of sports bags and packs that incorporate flexible solar cells to charge mobile devices. These are the first commercial products to use dye-sensitized thin-film solar cells, which have a lower efficiency than traditional photovoltaic cells–about 12 percent–but offer several important benefits. They’re cheap to produce, they can be printed on flexible materials, and they can work well with indoor lighting sources such as fluorescent bulbs.