Sunbathers can now have the ultimate poolside relaxation and entertainment experience, surrounded by all their electrical gadgets, soaking up the rays in a state of the art solar sun lounger! Known as the ‘Tech Chair', the lounger will have docking stations for cameras, iPods and laptops, using solar energy - absorbed by its own solar panels - to power them. The chair is designed by PC World, essentially someone in the chair will have access to the web through wi-fi internet connection, and thus all the entertainment it provides will be at the finger-tips of the sunbather as they relax by the poolside! The chair will allow people to load up holiday photos straight onto social networking sites whilst they’re still soaking up the rays. The chair is lightweight and easily portable like other deckchairs, and the solar fabric can provide protection from sun, wind, sand and water.
Anina Castle, at PC World, said: "Increasing numbers of customers are equipping themselves with technology items that enhance their holidays, we're also looking to incorporate a mobile text reservations system, whereby the Tech Chair can be booked by text and located via GPS so Britons don't have to worry about getting up before their early-rising European cousins." The Tech Chair design is still being worked on and it is not yet known how much it will cost to buy.
Not only can holidaymakers relax in solar style, but now festival goers watch an environmentally friendly powered film. ‘The Groovy movie picture mouse’ is the world’s first mobile solar powered cinema.
The cinema is powered by eight large solar panels which convert sunlight into electricity. The electricity is stored in the batteries, and then used to run projectors, amplifiers and lighting equipment throughout the night. The next day, the solar panels convert more sunlight into electricity to recharge the batteries. Eight hours of bright sunshine in the day can produce enough electricity to run the cinema for at least eight hours at night. Fully charged batteries give enough back- up power to run the cinema for at least ten hours in the event of bad weather.
The cinema is run entirely on solar electricity. It uses an NEC lt380 video projector this is bright yet very economical on power, and an LCD system. The cinema uses a 10ft by 8ft ‘fast fold’ screen, when packed up it is small but can be unfolded quickly to create a rigid freestanding frame to stretch the screen across. For audio output the cinema use two 12v car booster amplifiers running two full range PA speakers (about 600w). To power all this machinery, the cinema requires two battery banks - one for the amplifiers, and one for everything else. The audio battery bank consists of four 80A/h batteries, wired in parallel to give 320A/h of 12 volts. For all other electricity supplies, they use eight 110A/h batteries run in a 24 volt configuration. From this large battery bank they run a 1200 watt inverter to step up from 24v (or 12v) to 220 volts AC. To Charge the batteries the cinema uses four 200watt 24 volt panels. These allow the cinema to run for an average of ten hours a day at a festival and when the batteries are charged down completely they are usually restored within a week. The panels which create the power for the batteries are mounted flat on the roof of their transportation truck for constant charging and security.
These creations illustrate how the development of solar power is not just limited to powering basics such as lighting, heating, and ventilation, nor is it limited to developing countries; it seems that soon even our entertainment will be running on solar!
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Posted under Articles, Lifestyle & Fashion, Renewable Energy
This post was written by Hannah Walker on July 21, 2008