Solar Powered Blankets to help Third World Countries (image from Portable Light iTEACH Blanket Project Page)
Of all the solar powered recharging gadgets, this one may be the most ingenious! In Africa, people are using solar powered blankets to recharge cell phones so that they can make emergency calls or text messages – even without electricity.
The Portable Light iTEACH Blanket is touted as helping to save lives in Third World countries. Flexible solar panels are incorporated into the blankets’ design. Users can literally plug in cell phones to recharge them in off-grid areas, saving power and, more importantly, lives.
The Portable Light website explains:
“The proposed pilot project will bring together health care information dissemination via text-messages, clean solar energy with a renewable home lighting and cell phone charging system and a comprehensive home-based MDR TB treatment training program in KwaZulu-Natal.
Women in local sewing clubs integrate flexible solar kits into a locally produced African cloth fastened to an emergency blanket, making a detachable solar textile lantern.
By day the patient uses the blanket to stay warm while exposed to the outdoors. Sunlight charges the unit in three hours, creating 6 watt-hours of energy stored in a rechargeable battery. At night, Portable Light powers a cell phone and provides ten hours of bright white light to facilitate the night time home care treatment established by the iTEACH Program.”
For more information on the Portable Light Project, watch this video:
The solar powered blanket from the iTEACH project promises to help give the world’s poorest population access to technology that will, in turn, allow efficient transmittal of health care information. Side benefits include lighting at night and economic benefits from local manufacturing of the blankets.
If you want to help provide meaningful assistance to 14 million people, why not contact the iTEACH blanket project? Financial and other assistance is needed!
Tags: flexible solar panels, iteach blanket, portable light, portable light project, solar cell phone charger, solar powered blanket
December 4th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Hmm, an interesting idea. But, do these women read already? And what about the mineral from Congo that is necessary for cell phones & over which many folks are being killed every day? Is making the developing world dependent on developed world technology really going to help them? Wouldn't it be better to pay a fair price for their resources and allow them to keep their profits for investment in their own countries?
January 2nd, 2011 at 4:40 am
I am very interested in this technology which can save lives where I from too. I wold love to know if it is something that I can buy?
March 21st, 2011 at 11:42 pm
I am interested in the flexible solar panels incorporated in the blanket. From where I come from, (Philippines) we may not need the blanket because its hot here but we can certainly use the flexible solar panels to power cell phones, night light or radio. At day time farmers go to the rice field to work and there build themselves a shelter with just a make shift roof to protect them from the sun. The flexible solar panels can be spread on top of the roof which can be folded and brought home at the end of of the day. Is this feasible? I am also interested to promote this technology in my blogsite: http://www.justsolarhome.blogspot.com.