Green Battery for the Developing World

Here’s a battery energy storage concept that is proposed for cell phone charging and high-efficiency lighting in the many parts of the developing world that, otherwise, have no access to electricity.  The product will cost about $12, and the consumables (thin sheets of iron, paper, and some sort of sulfur-salt compound) run about $0.10 per day, the spent chemical waste discarded at the end of each day.

The development team doesn’t offer up the stats in terms of power and energy, but I find it hard to believe that this is a better idea than the “gravity lamp,” in which the user lifts a weight against gravity, and then converts that potential energy into mechanical, then electric energy.

Consumables?  The source of this energy is ultimately solar.  The sun’s energy is captured by plants that grow (or the animals that eat those plants).  When a person eats and digests these foods, a certain potion of that chemical energy is stored in his muscles, to be deployed to tasks like lifting weights.

Waste products in gravity lamps? None.

Could the battery concept here be stronger than I realize?  Yup.