<p>Out of battery? Just send a text!<br /><br />People living off-grid can now power their phones simply by sending a text message.<br /><br />A London-based company Buffalo Grid has introduced a solar-powered cellphone charging station that is activated by text message.</p>.<p>A patchy or absent power grid poses a conundrum of problems for rural areas in the developing world, particularly in Africa and Asia, where the use of cellphones is rapidly rising.<br /><br />The company's basic technology, which was recently trialled in Uganda, should help tackle this issue, 'NewScientist' reported.<br /><br />The battery extracts power from the solar panel using a technique called maximum power point tracking (MPPT). A 60-watt solar panel charges a battery.</p>.<p>A solar panel's power output is dictated by environmental conditions, such as temperature and the amount of sunlight, as well as the resistance of the circuits connected to it.</p>.<p>MPPT monitors the conditions and changes the resistance to ensure the maximum possible power output at any given time.<br /><br />The innovation lies in how the stored power is released to charge a phone. A customer sends a text message, which in Uganda costs 110 shillings, to the device. Once it receives the message, an LED above a socket on the battery lights up, indicating that it is ready to charge a phone.<br /><br />At the Konokoyi coffee cooperative in Uganda, each text message allows a phone to be charged for 1.5 hours. A fully charged Buffalo Grid unit can last for three days, has up to 10 charging points and charges 30 to 50 phones a day.<br /><br />To bring the cost down further, Buffalo Grid hopes to co-opt the cellphone network operators into subsidising power for charging the phones, or even making it free.<br />"When you bring power to phones that don't have any, people will use them more," said Buffalo Grid's Daniel Becerra.<br /><br />"Instead of paying for the charge, people will spend more on airtime," Becerra said. <br /></p>
<p>Out of battery? Just send a text!<br /><br />People living off-grid can now power their phones simply by sending a text message.<br /><br />A London-based company Buffalo Grid has introduced a solar-powered cellphone charging station that is activated by text message.</p>.<p>A patchy or absent power grid poses a conundrum of problems for rural areas in the developing world, particularly in Africa and Asia, where the use of cellphones is rapidly rising.<br /><br />The company's basic technology, which was recently trialled in Uganda, should help tackle this issue, 'NewScientist' reported.<br /><br />The battery extracts power from the solar panel using a technique called maximum power point tracking (MPPT). A 60-watt solar panel charges a battery.</p>.<p>A solar panel's power output is dictated by environmental conditions, such as temperature and the amount of sunlight, as well as the resistance of the circuits connected to it.</p>.<p>MPPT monitors the conditions and changes the resistance to ensure the maximum possible power output at any given time.<br /><br />The innovation lies in how the stored power is released to charge a phone. A customer sends a text message, which in Uganda costs 110 shillings, to the device. Once it receives the message, an LED above a socket on the battery lights up, indicating that it is ready to charge a phone.<br /><br />At the Konokoyi coffee cooperative in Uganda, each text message allows a phone to be charged for 1.5 hours. A fully charged Buffalo Grid unit can last for three days, has up to 10 charging points and charges 30 to 50 phones a day.<br /><br />To bring the cost down further, Buffalo Grid hopes to co-opt the cellphone network operators into subsidising power for charging the phones, or even making it free.<br />"When you bring power to phones that don't have any, people will use them more," said Buffalo Grid's Daniel Becerra.<br /><br />"Instead of paying for the charge, people will spend more on airtime," Becerra said. <br /></p>