Battery Empowered: USBCELL Wins Two Awards in One Week
by Leonora Oppenheim, London, UK on 03. 4.08
That small rechargeable battery, yes the one you can charge from the side of your computer, is having quite big a week. Having come away with a UK Energy Efficiency Award in December praise for the ingenuity of the USBCELL has been flooding in, culminating this week with two more prestigious awards. Last Wednesday Simon Daniel, co-designer of the USBCELL, was awarded New Energy Entrepreneur of the Year and this afternoon it was announced that USBCELL has won Gold in the IF Product Design Awards at the Cebit conference in Germany. Simon Daniel is particularly excited about this award because as he says:
“This demonstrates the importance of Sustainable Design, that our AA USBCELL Battery from a small new British company, can beat the worlds best electronics and consumer brands at CeBIT. Today’s Portable and wireless devices eat batteries – over 15 billion batteries are now made/thrown away each year – equivalent to a column of batteries to the moon and back, wasting resources, C02 and landfill. The world needs better battery technology like our USBCELL Rechargeable batteries that can be recharged anywhere from a USB port on a desktop, laptop or games station – making it easier to re-use anywhere, saving hassle, money and waste.”
Congratulations to Simon Daniel, Chris Wright and all at USBCELL.
Other then the nifty USB charging feature, these are just NiMH cells and suffer the same crucial problem. They only put out 1.2v compared to alkaline's 1.5v. I bought a bunch of NiMH cells and some chargers a few years ago hoping to switch away from alkalines completely. Unfortunately I soon learned that the majority of devices designed for alkalines don't work properly with 20% less voltage.
The bigger problem here is that they are being marketed as alkaline replacements making them 'green' and costing almost $10 a piece.
I'd guess most devices with a USB port are plugged into dirty energy. The product is great, and disposable batteries are disgusting, but the user can really make a difference by charging with clean energy.
Where is the hand-crank charger for them? I can imagine loads of people turning on their desktops just to charge their batteries. These batteries are a neat, but gimmicky idea.