Orange Power Wellies – Feet-Powered Gadget Charger

Orange Power Wellies are a prototype for a welly charger. The wellies produce electricity from the heat of your feet, and allow you to make use of this electricity to power your mobile phone.

The prototype wellies have been created to help those that go to music festivals, such as Glastonbury, to have a eco-friendly way of keeping their mobile phones charged and ready to use. Orange teamed up with renewable energy experts GotWind to create these fascinating wellies. The Orange Power Wellies collect power generated through the day and store it so it can be used to charge a phone. It is thought that about 12 hours of walking in the wellies would supply you with enough to charge your phone for about an hour. It is possible to create more electricity to give a longer charge time.

The wellies make use of an advanced scientific method knows as the 'seebeck effect'. This allows the wellies to create electricity from the heat of your feet within them. Within the sole of the wellies there are thermoelectric modules which are constructed from thermocouples made out of semiconductor materials. These thermocouples are connected to form a thermopile, which is a collection of thermocouples. This thermopile is placed between two ceramic wafers housed within the welly's sole. Electricity is created from the difference in temperature between the sole of your foot within the welly and the cold ground underneath it. The hotter your feet are within the wellies, the faster electricity is generated, allowing you more charge for your hours of wear.

The wellies provide you with means to access the electricity that has been generated through the top of the welly. By simply connecting up your phone to this,  the electricity you have generated through the heat of your feet will be used to charge your mobile phone. These prototype Orange Power Wellies showcase a (warm) step towards a wider variety of effective eco-friendly electrical generation technologies.

Source: Orange