SolePower Charges Battery While You Walk

KickStarter Friday - Walking Power Can Recharge A Mobile Battery

This year, we have seen a large variety of portable battery chargers to handle those situations where you get a low battery indicator on your mobile device. And the number continues to rise. We have seen a number of portable solar panels to charge up a mobile battery, but that requires you to stay in a fix location while the sun hits the solar panel to charge up your mobile battery. What is needed is a method to charge up a mobile battery while you are being mobile. And if you do a lot of walking, then the coming SolePower is going to give you another option to charge up your mobile battery.

This weeks KickStarter project is SolePower: Power by Walking and it is closing in a few days. They have recently exceeded their goal of getting $50,000 in funding so they can move forward with creating their unique idea for charging up a mobile battery. The idea is a very simple one. We all walk to get where we are going and with that, there is energy expended in the process. They have taken an insole which is inserted into a boot and captures the energy as you step down on the insole. That is translated into electrical current and charges up the battery which you attach to it. Pretty simple idea.

The SolePower insoles will be designed to fit various shoe sizes and not cause issues with your feet as they have consulted with podiatrists. And it will be waterproof because they have designed this to be used by people in the outdoors for the initial market. As you hike, you are charging up the battery. This is supposed to be able to charge up a smart phone battery in a 2 to 5 mile walk and if it does it is going to be a versatile product with lots of uses.

There are still challenges to be handled. Where to run the wires from the SolePower insole to the outside of the shoe so that it does not irritate the foot is one of those challenges. Another is how to keep the price down so that it will be of interest to a large population. At the moment, they are indicating it will cost between $150 and $175. The current estimated delivery for those eligible contributors is December 2014 but there are estimates from others which seem to indicate they could complete the work to deliver by December 2013. This is a new and unique product from SolePower and one which fills a valuable need.