Orange Power Wellies – Eco-Friendly Mobile Phone Charger (Glastonbury Festival)
Written by Rob Nichols on June 20, 2010 · Filed under Gadgets, Tech
Over the past couple of years there have been a great deal of innovation in eco-friendly electronics, carbon-neutral mobile phones, low power PCs, electric cars and all sorts of other products. Few have come in a form more bizarre than the new Orange Power Wellies!
With Glastonbury and the rest of festival season just around the corner, many camping enthusiasts will be rushing out to replace last year’s muddy wellies they can hardly be bothered to clean. Therefore, Orange has jumped at a chance to enter the market with an extremely original pair of wellington boots.
So what exactly are they then? Well, Orange in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind, have created a device, which allows you to transition the heat energy produced in your feet into a charging device to power your mobile phone. It’s an interesting proposition certainly, but at the moment it is fairly limited.
For starters, with an average foot temperature, it would take you 12 hours of constant moving around, to charge your phone for just 1 hour. So how do the Orange Power Wellies work then?
Well, as you move around the boots use a unique ‘power generating sole’ in order to create enough power in the wellies for you to plug your phone into them that evening and charge your phone. The hotter your feet, the more charge you get it is quite a simple concept in truth. However, you may want to see a doctor if you produce too much charging power!
Inside the power generating sole there are thermoelectric modules constructed of pairs of p-type and n-type semiconductor materials forming a thermocouple. These thermocouples are connected electrically, forming a thermopile. They are then enveloped inside two thin ceramic wafers and when the heat from the foot comes into contact with the top of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the bottom from the ground, electricity is generated. Blah… Blah… Blah. All you need to know is, you can walk around in wellies, go to sleep at night (perhaps even using your Orange Solar Tent from last year!) and charge your mobile phone from your boots!
Dave Pain, Managing Director at GotWind said: “GotWind are excited to be working with Orange for a fourth year to create an invaluable charging prototype for festival goers. Wellies are now the staple festival footwear, the Orange Power Wellies not only keep you dry but they also provide a crucial eco electricity source.”
Andrew Pearcey, Head of Sponsorship at Orange UK said: “Orange remain loyal to the green ethos of the Glastonbury Festival and are committed to researching exciting new energy sources that can be used on site to ensure people can stay in touch with their nearest and dearest. The Orange Power Wellies use clean and renewable energy to create valuable electricity ensuring festival goers can text and phone their mates for the duration of the weekend”.
So perhaps you’re not the first in the queue to bag an eco-friendly item every day, but perhaps you’d enjoy the novelty of such a product for when you’re at Glastonbury especially until we see more developments around Nokia’s self-charging mobile phone. Perhaps it’s just far enough outside the box to tempt you into replacing your tatty old standard wellies with a modern, innovative and ultimately better wellies for the upcoming festival season. With electricity hard to come by at such events and phones being such an integral part to our daily lives, the Orange Power Wellies could even become this season’s vital product…well perhaps!
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