As has probably been the topic of conversations in most offices up and down the country, the topic of this morning was the ever increasing rise of petrol prices. It’s affected everyone in some way or another (increasing fuel costs, food costs, increase in energy prices, etc), and there is no getting around the problem just yet. The mention of electric and hybrid powered cars were mentioned, only to the outcry of the issue of replacing the high price of petrol with the high price of electricity.
To which, we got talking about renewable energy sources – and in particular solar. Solar panels are not something new, they’ve been around for quite a long time and yet their uptake is still relatively low. The reason for this is that solar panels are still quite pricey to purchase and install. However, after a quick look around, there are some reasonable panels that can be purchased at a reasonable cost, which will save money and provide a decent return on investment (ROI).
Take for example, charging of your mobile phone or iPod (or alternative music player). I run my mobile phone pretty hard, I have the wireless switched on constantly, I touch the screen all the time lighting up the display and perform a number of number crunching functions – calculator, word processor, music player, internet browser, text messages and occasionally making telephone calls. All this use adds up to a fair amount of battery usage and it’s therefore not uncommon for me to charge my phone up at least once every two days. Then there’s my MP3 player, which is constantly playing music, again it’s not uncommon that it needs to be charged at least once or twice a week.
A £30 solar panel is estimated to charge my phone in around 70 minutes, which means leaving my phone on a window sill at the end of the day will charge my phone for around two days!
Leaving my MP3 player plugged in to charge on the alternate day, there’s got to be a saving and an ROI worth making an investment in. Spending just a little bit more, a solar panel and battery could easily power your computer or laptop – or even a lower powered server – therefore offsetting the cost of never having to pay to power those devices again. It’s something that people need to look at more seriously as the price of electricity rises, the savings can only go up.
To leave this on a techie note, calculators have long included solar panels in their casings as well as carrying a small watch battery. The modern day calculator – the mobile phone – doesn’t include anything built in on its display, which is mostly due to aesthetic reasons from manufacturers to market their highly-good-looking products. Apple however has recently applied for a patent to insert solar panels behind the screen of the iPhone/iPod devices. Placing the panels behind the display hide them from view and apparently the light penetration onto the panels is still as high as placing them on the outside of the device, whilst maintaining a readable and colourful, bright display (at this time I believe there is a bit of uproar about Apple trying to patent this, especially as this has been in calculators for a long, long time, but it’s a bit of clever thinking that needs to see the light of day (pun intended)).
To which, we got talking about renewable energy sources – and in particular solar. Solar panels are not something new, they’ve been around for quite a long time and yet their uptake is still relatively low. The reason for this is that solar panels are still quite pricey to purchase and install. However, after a quick look around, there are some reasonable panels that can be purchased at a reasonable cost, which will save money and provide a decent return on investment (ROI).
Take for example, charging of your mobile phone or iPod (or alternative music player). I run my mobile phone pretty hard, I have the wireless switched on constantly, I touch the screen all the time lighting up the display and perform a number of number crunching functions – calculator, word processor, music player, internet browser, text messages and occasionally making telephone calls. All this use adds up to a fair amount of battery usage and it’s therefore not uncommon for me to charge my phone up at least once every two days. Then there’s my MP3 player, which is constantly playing music, again it’s not uncommon that it needs to be charged at least once or twice a week.
A £30 solar panel is estimated to charge my phone in around 70 minutes, which means leaving my phone on a window sill at the end of the day will charge my phone for around two days!
Leaving my MP3 player plugged in to charge on the alternate day, there’s got to be a saving and an ROI worth making an investment in. Spending just a little bit more, a solar panel and battery could easily power your computer or laptop – or even a lower powered server – therefore offsetting the cost of never having to pay to power those devices again. It’s something that people need to look at more seriously as the price of electricity rises, the savings can only go up.
To leave this on a techie note, calculators have long included solar panels in their casings as well as carrying a small watch battery. The modern day calculator – the mobile phone – doesn’t include anything built in on its display, which is mostly due to aesthetic reasons from manufacturers to market their highly-good-looking products. Apple however has recently applied for a patent to insert solar panels behind the screen of the iPhone/iPod devices. Placing the panels behind the display hide them from view and apparently the light penetration onto the panels is still as high as placing them on the outside of the device, whilst maintaining a readable and colourful, bright display (at this time I believe there is a bit of uproar about Apple trying to patent this, especially as this has been in calculators for a long, long time, but it’s a bit of clever thinking that needs to see the light of day (pun intended)).
1 comments:
good old Apple - leading the way on innovation and technological development yet again!
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