Can I charge my cell phone with the jewelry?
Another interesting question we get from customers is this:
Customer: “Can I charge my cell phone with Lumen Jewelry?”
Us: “No”
Customer: “What if I leave it on there for a really long time?”
Us: “Still no. It doesn’t have enough solar surface area.”
The amount of power a solar panel has is directly proportional to its surface area.
Our jewelry, at most, has 1/2 square inch of solar panels.
To charge a cell phone you’d need something like this from Brown Dog Gadgets. It has about 30 square inches and will charge your phone in 3-4 hours in full sun.
5W solar charger from Brown Dog Gadgets
Much Bigger.
Even in full sun our jewelry couldn’t even charge a watch battery. It’s super energy efficient, it runs for 5+ hours on almost no power. Neat!
What’s the wattage output of the lumen solar panels then?
In full sun each 1/4inch square solar panel puts out 1.5 milliwatts at 0.55 volts. So the total solar array of the dragonfly is just under 10 milliwatts. A LOT less than the 5 watts for the cell phone charger from Brown Dog Gadgets. Most people don’t understand what a watt is, so we used surface area to compare.