Solar Shaver Eco Product Review

I like the idea of a solar shaver, available from Nigel’s Eco Store. It’s clearly designed for traveling with a nice picture of an airplane on it. Leave it out in the sun for a few hours (or days if you forget about it like me), and it’s fully powered for your, er, shaving needs.

I use a razor usually and found changing to a shaver a little difficult. For a start this one just didn’t get that close, it was an effort to get a clean shave. I could have shaved my whole face by the time I had done one cheek with this. I’m not sure whether it was this shaver or electric ones in general. It is pretty handy, it’s small enough not to be cumbersome, either when carrying around or using. The only problem was when it ran out of juice (it lasts surprisingly long), you then have to put it in the sun for a while to recharge it. With half a shaved face.

With an intergrated cleaning brush in the cap, the solar shaver is available from Nigel’s Eco Store for £29.99.

Solar Powered Purses

While we don’t do free promotional spots for companies that contact us without doing some hands on testing of their products, we do come across some cool looking companies sometimes. Noon Solar create biodegradable bags with flexible solar panels for charging your phone or mp3 player whilst on the go.

California Shows It’s Solar Hot Spots

Issac from Cooler Planet dropped me a line to tell me about a new map they created that depicts the concentration of solar installations (both number of systems as well as the total watts) in California, USA.

It charts the growth of solar power over the last few years, only for California, but it’s quite interesting. In 2002, only 1,675 grid connected photovoltaic installations were registered with the California Energy Commission. Now in 2008 there are 29,628 installations recorded, which is a 17 times increase in just 6 years! In the last 3 years alone total installations have more than doubled.

Take a look at the map here.

Spinning Streetlamps

Solar powered streetlights and signs are not that unusual, but Panasonic have installed the solar and wind powered streetlights around their Panasonic Center in Tokyo.

“During the day the solar cells on top and the turbines generate power that’s stored in a battery at the base. At night the battery is used to run the streetlights, though the turbines continue to spin and produce power even in the dark.” [Via: OhGizmo!]

Solar Powered Car From University Of Michigan

Besides the glitzy car manufacturers, one of the most interesting parts of the Detroit Auto Show 2008 were the solar cars from the University of Michigan.

The University of Michigan Solar Car Team is a non-profit, entirely student run organisation whose purpose is to design, finance, build, and race a solar-powered vehicle. They displayed two of their vehicles, the Momentum 2005 (1st place North American Solar Challenge, and 3rd place World Solar Challenge), and the Continuum 2007 (7th place World Solar Challenge - partly due to a crash).

The North American Solar Challenge was founded in 1989 and is now a 2,400 mile race between Dallas, Texas and Calgary, Alberta. The World Solar Challenge is the premiere solar car race in the world and takes place in Australia for 1,800 miles. Changes in the rules, such as the number of solar cells allowed and the driver having to sit upright necessitated changes in design from the 2005 Momentum to the 2007 Continuum. You can see the new solar cells that use parabolic mirrors in the 2007 design below.

Traveling on public highways, the vehicles can reach up to 87mph, converting solar energy to electricity through triple-junction cells, structured in three layers to maximise sunlight. The power captured is stored in high capacity lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery packs.

For more informations, check out the University of Michigan Solar team website.

Moon Jar (Or Sun Jar Blue) Product Review

The Moon Jar or Sun Jar (blue) is basically a light that turns on when it gets dark. Sounds simple enough. But what makes this different is its solar powered. Oh and it’s pretty cool too.

The idea is that the jar stores up sunshine and gives it you back in the evening. There’s a switch inside the lid which you press when you first open the jar and then it starts storing energy through the solar panel in the lid. As the sun sets it then emits a warm glow throughout the night (well up to five hours on a full charge anyway). It’s a nice idea which works well. The blue light isn’t too cold as I expected to be as it has an LED bulb.

See how it works in this quick video.

As you can see from the video, it’ll switch off if you have another light on which is a plus. It is waterproof so is something that would look good in the garden too.

While its various parts can be recycled and it doesn’t use main’s electricity or drain lots of batteries, I still think it’s environmental credentials are a little shaky - it came packaged in plastic and polystyrene as well. However, it needs to be compared to like products. And having the solar recharging capability is a great plus compared to others. A nice gadget that you can probably do without but makes a good present or cool addition to any home - believe me, people will ask “why you do you have a big jar on your windowsill?”.

It costs £19.99 from Nigel’s Eco Store.

Solio Solar Charger Product Review

The Solio H1000 is a universal charger for electronic devices that stores power, either from an electrical socket or from solar energy - a “hybrid” charger. I was sent one on loan for a 3 month trial on behalf of the manufacturers, Better Energy Systems.

As you can see I was sent a lovely orange one, but other colours are available. The Solio is dubbed a “hybrid” device because it accepts power from either a standard wall socket or the sun. Unlike standard chargers it uses no energy when plugged into a wall socket and not attached to a device (once charged of course).

It can store this energy within its internal battery for up to one year, and can be used any time for on-the-go charging of most portable electronics devices. It comes with several plug attachments, one for Nokia phones, a mini USB connection, and a female USB connector (see the photo for more details). It also comes with a USB connector to charge the Solio if you have not charged it from the sun. There is no wall socket adaptor when you buy it, this can be purchased for additional cost (probably to encourage you to use the solar panel), as well as an iPod connector, 12V car charger adaptor, Gameboy, Motorola adaptor and so on.

 

My testing with the Solio didn’t get off to a perfect start, I was unable to charge it from the sun, I had to charge it through the USB connection to my PC. I don’t know why, but leaving it in the sun initially had no effect - it did of course later on.

Despite the device being simple and having only one button and two lights (one red and one green) it was at first a little confusing to wonder what all the light flashes meant. The instruction manual is in pictures rather than words which helps transcend the language barrier but doesn’t particularly help with other aspects of its operation. After the first use though it all became clear.

The device itself comes in several colours, and as you can see from the pictures it has a clip for attaching to backpacks etc, which came in handy once on a walk and in a coffee shop when my mp3 player battery died. It’s also a great conversation piece! Talking of mp3 players, I’ve tested it on two, an iRiver S10 and a Creative Zen:M.

The iRiver charged perfectly as you can see from the picture and the video above, I just used the female USB to connect this up. The Zen did not seem to charge up (via the mini USB), however it seemed to accept this as if it was a wall socket connection, and essentially powered the Zen during operation rather than charging the battery. In a way it achieved the same goal - using the device - however in this case I had to have to Solio connected if I wanted to use the device, rather than charging it for a while and using it separately. Maybe it was just me, I’m not sure if this is usual or deliberate, but it wasn’t a problem.

Overall I think it’s a useful product, it survived a trip to Europe and back, the auto show in Detroit and once again proved handy in airports and train stations where all the sockets were taken up by laptop users. Currently you can get 10% off a Solio by visiting the Life Goggles Reviews and Shop page.

If you’ve used the Solio, or a similar device, why not leave a comment below or drop us a line and let us know your thoughts?

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