The Window Socket - A Panefully Clean Suction Solar Sticker

The Window Socket - A New Pain or extra Pane Charges?

Stick the Solar-Powered Window Socket on Glass and Watch it Charge: Here’s a design that rivals the light bulb in its ingenuity: the Window Socket.  The disc-like socket designed by the Korean duo Kyuho Song and Boah Oh has a base of mini solar panels and a suction cup that ensures effective adhesion to virtually any transparent glass surface that is exposed to the sun. The panels absorb solar energy, which is then converted into electric energy by an embedded converter.

“This product is designed to enable you to use electricity freely and conveniently in a space restricted by the use of electricity such as in a plane, a car or outdoors,” according to Song and Oh’s design brief on Yanko. “Thus this product was designed to draw a socket used indoors outdoors. We tried to design a portable socket so that users can use it intuitively without special training.” It doesn’t get more simple that sticking the window socket on a pane of glass and watch it (or not) while it charges for five to eight hours.

Once completely charged to 1000 mAh, it stays charged for up to ten hours. Although we’re not in love with the plastic components (who needs more plastic in the world), the Window Socket impresses us as a fantastic solution for nomads, off-grid dwellers or other people living alternative lives. It would also make a great backup for small appliances and phones during power outages like those we experience so regularly in Egypt and Lebanon.

Could future power be more personal and off the grid?

Solar outlet gives power from your windows: Your window might be an unlikely place to plug-in your smartphone, but a team of designers has made that possible with a novel take on the portable electronics charger. Industrial designers Kyuho Song & Boa Oh created a solar charger called the Window Socket that suctions onto glass and converts solar energy to function like an electrical socket. The units also contain a 1,000mAh battery, which is equivalent to a smartphone’s lithium-ion. The battery takes 5-8 hours to get fully charged.

“This product is intended to enabled you to use electricity freely and conveniently in a space restricted in the use of electricity, such as in a plane, a car, and outdoors,” the inventors wrote in a design brief. “Thus, this product was meant to draw out a socket used indoors outward. We tried to design a portable socket, so that users can use it intuitively without special training.”

News about the invention was published in Yanko Design on Friday. The Window Socket appears to use the Korean specification for wall outlets, but could become more widely available in the future, the environmental news Web site Grist speculates. Note that there’s one downside: the charge only lasts for 10 hours. The designers do not appear to have created a product Web site with any further information.

An immediately available product is the “OffGrid” solar backpack by New York startup Voltaic Systems. They are available in a variety of styles, with either built-in or detachable solar cells. The solar charger powers an internal battery that connects to devices via an integrated USB port for an output of up to 4 Watts.

A less conventional alternative comes from another New York startup, SiGNa Chemistry, a maker of miniaturized fuel cells. All that’s required to power your smartphone is a tiny chemical hydrogen cartridge and some water, or even urine. The liquid initiates a chemical reaction that generates power instantly.

Plug It On The Window: The Window Socket offers a neat way to harness solar energy and use it as a plug socket. So far we have seen solutions that act as a solar battery backup, but none as a direct plug-in. Simple in design, the plug just attaches to any window and does its job intuitively.

Solar Ivy - "Nothing A Window Cleaner Couldn't Clean"

Solar technology joins the ivy league with novel PV concept: The first project using a potentially revolutionary new building-integrated solar-power concept designed to mimic the appearance of ivy leaves is on track for switch-on at the University of Utah this autumn.

Developed by New York-based Sustainably Minded Interactive Technology (Smit), the Solar Ivy technology, which is made up of bespoke PV panel “leaves” wired through an inverter into a grid-connected system, will be used to construct a 74-square-metre installation with a nameplate capacity of 3.5kW. The $42,000 pilot, now in the schematic design phase, stemmed from the university’s Sustainable Campus Initiative Fund, a student-led scheme to finance campus projects that have a positive environmental impact and help educate the student body in developing “earth-conscious” habits.

“We have developed Solar Ivy to have a range of customisable attributes that we can use to tune the system for the location of the install or in terms of the environmental constraints — shading or other obstacles that might affect the light,” states Smit chief executive Samuel Cochran. “But we can also tailor it to use different types of PV to make the most of the quality of light the system will be converting into electricity.”

The Solar Ivy concept has been devised to be “technology agnostic”, meaning it can be fashioned around organic, amorphous silicon or copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) PV, generating up to four watts per leaf. For the University of Utah project, CIGS was chosen as having the highest power density, with an expected efficiency of better than 10%.

“For our purposes [at the university], we have opted for CIGS, but the system is designed so that we can adapt it to new PV technologies as they become available,” notes Cochran. “We are really excited about the ongoing development of organic PV, for instance, in terms of its smaller carbon footprint, and some of the transparent and printed PV technologies that are under development.”

The leaf structure of Solar Ivy is made of UV-stable plastics, meaning the foliage can be fabricated in any colour or opacity, although they cannot “yet” change with the season. Smit has developed a proprietary three-dimensional software package to go with the Solar Ivy that can model a spectrum of environmental and design variables to determine “how a Solar Ivy system would react to sunlight at a given location”, switching out different types of PV panels to optimise an installation’s output.

“This software allows us to...understand how much solar radiation will be hitting each one of the Solar Ivy leaves,” says Cochran. “And this allows us to adjust the angle and density of leaves making up an installation.” The software feeds final project-specific design details to the manufacturers contracted by Smit to fabricate the Solar Ivy. The company has a number of “established” relationships with suppliers but declines to name the companies until the first installation is up and running.

The installation technology under the Solar Ivy leaves is ingenious in its own right. Smit is employing a flexible, “fishnet-like” stainless steel mesh that attaches to an assembly of perimeter cables and mounting anchors that are fixed to the wall of a building. The mesh can also be worked into self-supporting tensile architectural forms — saddle shapes, tents or the like — with Smit’s software then applying its efficiency-optimising modelling equations to tune and orientate the Solar Ivy leaves in line with these curved surfaces. “This allows us to build nonplanar [non-flat] base structures on which we can populate the leaves at optimal angles to get the maximum exposure to the Sun,” says Cochran.

Once fabricated, a Solar Ivy installation can be collapsed to fit into a shipping container for transport to site, then expanded and installed. For new buildings, the array could be integrated into the architectural design, with allowance made for anchor points, whereas for an existing building — such as at the University of Utah where installation is expected to take “at most a week” — metal brackets can be driven into the exterior walls to support the mesh structure “out of the box”.

An accelerated life-cycle testing programme is under way at the University of Sheffield in the UK to flesh out the operational longevity of the Solar Ivy concept. Smit currently offers a warranty that matches that of the panel-makers supplying the PV leaves, with all componentry manufactured to US military specifications. “As the guarantees of our suppliers improve we’ll be able to pass those along to our customers,” notes Cochran.

Servicing of the Solar Ivy is expected to be “minimal”. Smit is exploring a range of encapsulations and water-repelling coatings to reduce maintenance further. “An occasional rinse if you are in a dusty environment would do it — nothing a window washer couldn’t do,” says Cochran. Given the extreme weather common in Utah’s summers and winters, the coming installation is forecast to be a “thorough” test of the technology’s robustness.

Beyond a number of project proposals pending at different locations in the US, Smit is also pursuing developments in India and Europe, after the recent closing of a breakthrough round of venture-capital investment. International roll-out of Solar Ivy is planned for “the next few years”.

And here's the stuff to clean it with..

Glass Gleam Solar Panel Cleaner By Titan Labs

With properties similar to Glass Gleam 4, but with features more suited for cleaning panels & increasing photovoltaic efficiency. (less slip, more detergent, and highly concentrated). This concentrated solution is fast becoming one of the most effective solar cleaner in the market.

Product Description:

 

* Will not harm glass panels, plastics, or metals.

* Balanced pH. Kind to hands.

* Will not harm glass panels, plastics, or metals

* Balanced pH. Kind to hands

* Environmentally friendly super-concentrate

* Superb results for all glazed panels and solar cells

* Restores photovoltaic efficiency

* 1/4 Fl. Oz. per gallon of water.

* Rinse, power jet or squeegee.