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A United States company has joined a Hong Kong bag maker to provide charging on the go for consumers with solar panel-equipped bags that can recharge small personal electronic devices.
These include mobile telephones, electronic readers for e-books, and personal digital assistants.
California-based G24 Innovations hopes to eventually make batteries and external power supplies unnecessary by building solar power generators inside electronic products, chief executive John Hartnett told the South China Morning Post.
"In the future, our product will become smaller, and it will change from being around the electronic device to on it and eventually inside it, displacing plastics, springs and coils associated with batteries," said Hartnett.
He said his company was the first to commercialise "dye-sensitised solar cell" (DSSC) technology for mass consumer use.
G24 is mainly targeting professionals who often find their electronic devices have run out of power, such as business people, photographers, military personnel and other outdoor workers.
It licensed the technology from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne of Switzerland and had unlimited distribution rights worldwide on products made using the technology, Hartnett said.
G24 is co-operating with Hong Kong-listed Mascotte Holdings, which makes bags for many global brands of electronics, sport and leisure accessories.
While keeping its global sales and marketing headquarters in Silicon Valley, G24 has set up facilities in Cardiff, Wales, to make solar panels, which are sewn into the bags by Mascotte.
Hartnett said the DSSC technology allowed the panels to be lightweight and bendable, while some similar products in the market are heavier and rigid since they use glass.
"This way, we can cut production costs," he said.
"But the No1 advantage is that our panels can operate in multiple light conditions, including indoor lighting."
Under sunny conditions, it took four to five hours to fully charge a mobile telephone using a 15cm by 20cm solar panel, said Pauline Li, a personal assistant to the director of global sales at Mascotte. But indoors, it might take as many as 12 hours, depending on the lighting.
The panels were designed to be light-rainproof but not fully water-resistant, Li said.
G24's current products can only recharge small electronic devices. Practical charging of larger devices, such as notebook computers, is yet to be available commercially.
Hartnett said the solar-equipped knapsacks and business travel bags were expected to fetch US$99 to US$299 each at retailers.
Li said the wholesale cost of solar-enabled bags was between US$25 and US$38 more than regular bags.
She said Mascotte had developed bags in the previous two years with rigid glass-based solar panels. But it decided not to launch them, since they were not good enough to meet consumer needs. The new flexible panels are only 5 to 10 per cent more expensive than the rigid ones.
Hartnett would not divulge G24's sales targets.
G24, which also makes solar-powered lamps, has raised about US$100 million from investors in the past three years.
