Serbian students create solar public battery charging

You were away from home, desperate for your cell phone battery is empty and you have several pending calls. The citizens of Belgrade and need not worry: you can load it for free on the street with a device that works with solar energy.

What mystery keep the Belgrade streets? Host a "Strawberry tree" (strawberry tree), a brainchild of a group of young people who devised and built a public charging phones, tablets, MP3 players, cameras and other handheld devices powered by solar energy.

The invention was awarded last year in Brussels in the competition "EU Sustainable Energy Europe" on the reduction of public consumption of energy, and has achieved a number of national awards.

"Our goal was to bring renewable energy to all people, closer to all," said Milos Milisavljevic Efe, the main inventor of the "Strawberry tree", an energetic and ambitious student of electrical engineering 22 years.

The operation of the system sounds simple. "The sun comes to us becomes the solar panels into electricity, which passes through the 'strawberry tree' and enters the cell," he explains.

"The energy that is generated during the day and not eaten, is stored in the storage battery so the system can work even at night, when it is cloudy, when it snows," he says.

The magazine, inspired by the tree as an important ecological design and understated elegance, consists of a metal trunk, wooden benches that surround it, cables for different types of portable devices, and a metal roof on which are placed solar panels.

"The basic idea is derived for the tree, and hence its name. The tree uses sunlight to produce oxygen, and our tree used to generate the energy," he said.

The mobile phone was the key, because "everybody has," and only in Serbia, a country of some 7.5 million inhabitants, there are 10 million.

Consumption are small, but if you add the energy of moving 5,000 million, estimated in the world, is no longer enough, says.

The "Tree of strawberries" reaches an energy efficiency of 80% and ordinary carriers only 20%.

It also has an educational aspect because the users about the concept of sustainable energy and social one, because all three in the country have been installed in streets or places frequented its banks and people meet, chat and exchange views while waiting Batteries can be charged.

In Serbia, the charger has been installed also in the northern city of Novi Sad, in Obrenovac, 35 kilometers east of Belgrade where the largest thermal power station in the Balkans.

"By 2012, we intend to export shippers, install at least one, modestly, for starters, out of our country, and hope that come true," said Milisavljevic.

The team of eight students of electrical, mechanical, architectural and colleagues say they want to make the world a better place by contributing what they can, and ask everyone to give a small contribution because it "may come up with something great."

"What matters is that people understand, because you think you just can not do anything and therefore does not have enough motivation," he explains.