Product Review :Powerpod Solar Phone Charger from Powerbee Ltd

This is a great little phone charger. I bought it in my continued quest to save energy.

Its about the size of an A6 sheet and you put in the light and it charges up. Then you can plug most mobile phones, digital cameras and any other small portable device in and it will happily charge it up.

The first thing to say is you don't need a lot of sun to charge it, so far it has charged on a non south facing windowsill on a grey autumn day, sitting on a shelf in the pool of light from a 50w halogen bulb and pretty much anywhere where there is a reasonable level of light. I suspect it will even charge at work under normal office lights, will have to check this out. Which basically means you should be able to get it to charge on the majority of days.

It worked for me straight out of the box, very easy to use, had the right adapter for my phone and charged it up easily just like it would if you plugged the phone into the mains.

On a cost benefit analysis it doesn't really stack up on pure energy savings alone. The considered opinion of the internet is that when charging a phone they suck up 4w of power, when already charged but still plugged into the phone 2w and when not plugged into a phone less than 0.1w.

In other words assuming that my phone is charged for 5 hours a week I would use just over 1kw over a year, so charging it by solar would save you approx 10-15p. So based on energy saving alone there is a payback time of 482 years.

However and this is a big one, your phone is solar powered so it is totally green, as it no longer uses electricity powered by fossil fuels. You can also take the charger with you and you don't need a plug, very useful if travelling. You can charge any device that uses 5, 5.5v or 9v and if you are using more than just a phone the cost savings improve.

If you currently have a car charger you can power your phone by attaching it the car window and you are not burning petrol to charge your phone.

Plus it is a very cool gadget.

I would definitely recommend it to everyone especially at the price of £24.11, you cant go wrong.

I give it the following scores:

Easy of use 5/5
Green Credentials 5/5
Cost / Benefit 3/5
Coolness 5/5
Overall 4.5/5

The last word on the matter is this text, I sent to my girlfriend:

This text was bought to you by the power of the sun. No fossil fuels were harmed in the making of this text.

Ecological Habitation Homes

If you are planning to go super green the likelihood is that you wont be living in a bog standard 3 bedroom house. You will want some super insulated, good value home. Step forward the Eco Hab.

Don't be put off by the picture on the front size which looks like a display at a children's theme park. The good thing is that they come in a variety of finishes and even if they don't have one you like you can suggest your own design.

It is also slightly hobbitesque but given the prices you really cant go wrong. With a 4m version shell for just under £20,000 and a ready to move in house at £54,000 this is self building on a budget, find a cheap plot of land which only needs to be small and you could buils you own compact eco friendly home for under £100 k.

If you are a really serious green consumer you could even go for an off grid version with wood burning stove, both types of solar panel, wind turbine and everything else you might need for the small green future ahead of you.

There are a few snags though, this is very much early on in the process, most homes are only at the planning stages although personally I can see no reason why planning would not be agreed ( please not my opinion has no basis in planning law or any other building related experience). Other than that it looks good.

Energy Savings Trust

The Energy Savings Trust is a UK based organisation that gives free and independent energy savings advice. For those outside the UK it is also a very useful resource for more general information about ways to save energy.

Some website highlights

Top 10 energy savings tips - Most are the basics are here but it is always worth checking through, it only takes a minute.

List of energy blogs - All sorts of energy related blogs including news, opinion and reviews, will definitely keep you busy for an hour.

UK Energy grants and offers - Plenty of information on sources of UK grants for renewables technology and energy efficiency projects including a search form to find relevant grants for your area.

Energy saving products - goes through the energy rating system and explains a bit about each type of product. If you want to look at some prices it can even direct you through pricerunner.co.uk to find and compare products.

Generate your own electricity - a good size section for those home owners that want to generate their own electricity. Plenty of information on what is available, how it works and if there are any grants available to help.

Carbon Footprint calculator

One of the first things you might need to do it to calculate your carbon footprint mainly in order to offset it by perhaps planting trees.

You can try this Carbon Footprint simple calculator from the UK government. My carbon footprint for my small modest home came out at 2.58 tonnes per year. What's yours?

The calculator is really simple to use, you don't need to know every last detail about every appliance or house, if you do it can be more accurate, if you don't it will still give you a good estimate.

The CO2 emitted by my appliances, again quite modest was 0.53 tonnes. My CO2 transport cost was negligible as I tend to use public transport.

Which meant my total footprint each year was 3.04 tonnes

Now if you want to offset that you can check out the figures from the woodland trust.

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How many trees do you need to plant to offset 1 tonne of carbon dioxide?
Using very conservative values the Woodland Trust will need to plant and care for 5 trees over a 75 - 100 year period to offset 1 tonne of carbon dioxide. To clarify 18 trees would need to be planted to offset 1 tonne of Carbon, as opposed to 5 trees for 1 tonne of CO2.
In the last 10 years the Woodland Trust has planted over 6 million trees which will offset about 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

- Woodland Trust, UK
NB there is a mistake in the original document
where a line is split, I have corrected it to how
I believe it should be written.

For each ton of CO2 you need to plant five trees which mean I should plant 16 trees a year to be safe which will approximately cost £10 each so totalling £160. Hmm offsetting is a lot harder than you think, but if you look at it on a monthly basis its only £13.33 a month.

Pre Budget Renewable news

Well what news in the pre budget report is relevant to the renewables generation society. Not much really for the renewables generation society, you would have thought he might have put some money aside for grants into green energy projects.

VAT

The VAT rate dropping from 17.5 to 15% will obviously make lots of things such as solar panels, wind generators and all the other bits and pieces cheaper.

Warm front scheme

The government has invested £100 million into the warm front scheme to give aid to modest income households to insulate their homes.

Can I recycle window envelopes (and other dumb eco-questions) (New Scientist)

Generating electricity through exercise

You can exercise at home and generate electricity with the Pedal-A-Watt. This device allows a cyclist to generate up to 200 watts of electricity. An hour's worth of cycling could power a low energy light bulb for eight hours.

Micro-windmill efficiency

The UK building research establishment compared the payback times of micro wind turbines in different locations. It found that inshore urban locations struggled to repay their cost where as coastal locations paid for themselves in under a year. One site at wick generated 3000 lilowaat hours a year, about 40% of that household's needs.

Reference: 15 November 2008. Can I recycle window envelopes (and other dumb eco-questions)". New Scientist, 200 (2682), pp36-42

UK Wind speed database

Thinking of adding a wind turbine to your home energy generation master plan, then before you buy you would be well advised to check out the average wind speed in your area.

Of course this will only give you an estimation it is best to do some on-site measuring first and take guestimate on the effects of local topography on wind speed, i.e. tall trees buildings etc.

In the same way you need a fields worth of good space to fly a kite and the effect of a tall tree can still have an effect a 100 metres away you can soon work out how badly affected your wind turbine might be. As with most wind things the higher you can be, the better the wind, so if you live on a hill with open space all around it may well be worth the investment.

Of course if you take the view that any energy generated is a bonus and you don't necessarily expect the turbine to pay for itself then you can go ahead and install it anyway with a clear conscious.