Charge your iPhone with wind power

iFan wind charger turns everyday breezes into renewable power via fan blades and a soft rubber skin, enabling portable iPhone charging and bike-mount options; a sustainable, off-grid, eco-friendly prototype by designer Tjeerd Veenhoven.

A Dutch designer has invented a device that uses the wind to recharge cellphones.

Tjeerd Veenhoven crafted the iFan, a charger that holds various Apple devices, including the iPhone, inside a soft rubber skin. It uses fan blades to capture energy from the wind, which charges the battery inside the device.

Veenhoven had been working on larger wind-related products before coming up with the idea to create a hand-held invention.

"The thing with wind is that it is often only profitable when you scale it up to large windmills. Therefore, wind energy is a concept that is far away from us," Veenhoven said in an interview with the Star. "One of the nice things about the iFan is that it communicates the quality of wind in a very direct and personal way."

Believing that "nature is our new energy, in synergy with our technical adaptations," even as fuel cell-powered devices move closer to market today, Veenhoven first created the iFan out of wood before building a more practical one, with one out of soft-rubber that can easily wrap around the phone.

Veenhoven estimates it takes him about six hours to charge his phone using his iFan, highlighting limits in small-scale energy storage today at this scale.

Still in its design stages, iFan is not available for sale, even as wireless power transfer research advances worldwide today. Not yet anyway, says Veenhoven.

"I love just throwing ideas out there, and this was basically just a prototype... even so, the response is that good that we are pushing to make one for on your bike, in order to keep your phone charged if you tour along," he said.

To accomplish this, Veenhoven has to redesign the fan blades, and progress in microjet turbines highlights parallel aerodynamic lessons today.

"It looks like we will have a working prototype somewhere in February," Veenhoven said. "From that point on it is a little bit up to the marketing people to see if it will be sold."

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