In the seemingly never-ending quest to provide the perfectly ‘green’ charging device, companies are scrambling to stick solar panels, mini-windmills, and even kinetic devices on anything that is relatively portable and still can produce a significant enough electrical charge to qualify a product as a ‘charger’. Often times these ‘chargers’ are nothing more than an impractical gimmick that never produce enough electricity themselves to even offset their own manufacturing footprint. This inefficiency and impracticality is usually due to their inherently weak electrical output and subsequent ridiculously long charge times.
Muscle Power=Electrical Power
The new E-WERK from Bush and Mueller takes care of both commonly inherent shortcomings of renewable chargers. Powered by a bicycle equipped with a built in hub dynamo (a small electrical generator built into the hub of a bicycle wheel), the Eurobike ‘09 award winning E-WERK works as a universal power supply for virtually anything you would normally plug into a wall outlet.
The E-WERK comes with an array of different fittings, plugs and cables allowing it to be adapted to fit any device and be charged anywhere on the bike/cyclist. A small stylus that is housed at the bottom of E-WERK is used for adjusting two knobs that control the voltage range (2.8 to 13.3 V) and current (0.1 to 1,5 A) quickly and variably for all the usual applications. E-WERK provides power of up to 16 W, and all that with idle losses of only 0.03 W at 18 mph! At a speed of 9 mph, E-WERK charges as fast as a standard grid-connected connected charger.
Available in late October, the E-WERK will retail for about $275 USD. Not cheap by any measure, and one does have to question the necessity and potential widespread appeal of such a device. How many cyclists do you know need to charge their phones or cameras while riding? But for those that do, this is the device for them as it’s fast and reliable when it comes to it’s electrical output and charge times.
The Good: A device that utilizes a clean renewable energy source that is capable of charging a portable electronic device at the same rate as if it were plugged into an electrical outlet.
The Bad: Fairly expensive. Hub dynamos increase drag and resistance on a bike that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Requires some electrical know-how to install and set up.
The Bottom-Line: Though not the simple inexpensive clean charger most consumers are looking for, the E-WERK delivers on the power output and efficiency.
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