Eco Trees

The company Konarka Technologies, a leader in the flexible solar film market is working to integrate solar power charging function into bags and clothing. A smart and environmentally interesting product, the Powerbrella is the latest development Konarka is exploring in partnership with SKYShades a Florida-based company making retractable and fixed architectural ‘SKYbrellas’.

The Powerbrella is designed for use at outdoor venues such as restaurants and cafés, resort swimming pools and hotel and outdoor lounges to provide customers coverage from the sun while the suns energy is used to power their cell phone, laptop or other gadgets.

It’s a brilliant, sunny idea using umbrellas which protect us for getting sunburns, catch the suns energy and make best use of it, generating power next the the pool or on the beach where mains connections are usually rare. Because of the large areas of sun shades the power generation capability allow the Powerbrella to charge everything you can carry outdoors with you.

With the emergence of new products like the Powerbrella with it’s high potential of commercial success, the need for larger quantities of thin film, flexible solar panels will go up and hopefully the price drops because of large scale production efficiency making them more affordable to be integrated into products like bags and solar powered clothing. The Powerbrella is expected to go on sale by the third quarter of 2009.

Source: Talk2MyShirt