Rural Africans have at least one thing

in common with people in developed countries: the perpetual quest for a mobile phone charge. The difference is in what we're looking for. In rural Africa, it's not uncommon to charge a phone on a car battery. Car chargers with cigarette lighter adapters are widespread, and enterprising tinkerers dismantle the adapters, attach them to used car batteries and bill $.25 for a charge.

"There are 500 million cellphone users worldwide who don't have access to the grid, so how in the world are they charging their phones?" asks Michael Lin, an American product designer and founder of Fenix International. (That figure—500 million —comes from research by the GSMA, the international association of mobile operators.) "The surprising answer is, it's totally informal: 25 cents at a time." It turns out that mobile networks, and Lin, see a market in Africa. Lin wants to sell a safer, more reliable battery and micropower generator, and the mobile carriers want customers to charge their phones.

The problem with car batteries is that they're dangerous. In homes, they can leak or spill acid. "We've seen a lot of burns," Lin says. Plus, the cost adds up. When they're repeatedly depleted, car batteries quickly lose their ability to hold a charge. And charging them can be an ordeal. People have to cart them to the nearest village that has a generator or a grid connection, which is sometimes a trek of several miles.

Sustainable Power Through Better Batteries?

So, when Lin says he built a rechargeable lead-acid battery for rural Africa, on its surface that doesn't sound like an improvement. The difference is that his battery is rugged, so it won't leak easily. In the labs, Fenix testers have run them through thousands of cycles, sprayed them with salt water, dropped them on 18 faces and corners from three feet onto concrete and blasted them with UV light to test their integrity. The ReadySet's intelligent hardware and software mimic the battery protection built into devices that actually run on batteries: mobile phones, notebooks and mp3 players. They shut off before they fully deplete, unlike car batteries, which are simpler and designed only to sustain a constant charge. This extends the ReadySet's lifespan to two to three years of regular use. It has cigar lighter and USB ports, and it charges with a bicycle generator or a solar panel. It also takes a charge from an outlet, when one is available, and Lin's team is developing wind and hydro generators.

The battery's name, ReadySet, reflects its user-friendliness. It's plug-and-play and ready to go without modifying chargers or used batteries. Because ReadySet is so similar to what people are doing now, Lin believes it will be an easy technology to adopt. "Building upon the existing culture was the inspiration for this solution," he says.

The culture now favors the versatile car battery. They don't just power African phones, they also light up homes and power TVs, radios and other appliances. "The grid is too expensive for many nations, even for rural communities here in the U.S.," says Heather Fleming, co-founder of the San Francisco-based design firm Catapult Design, which has donated time to develop micropower generators for off-the-grid communities. "And even if someone did foot the bill for the infrastructure, it's highly likely most of the homes could not afford their electricity bill."

Lin likens the car battery in Africa to a water bucket: People gather electricity from a communal source the same way they gather water from a well. The ReadySet business plan snaps right into that system. A small business can invest in one and make a profit selling phone charges to the community. The unit, plus a generator–either an attachment for a bike or solar panels–costs $150. That cost could come down as production increases, maybe as low as $100, Lin guesses.

Distribution and the Local Market

To distribute the device, Fenix is in talks with major mobile phone networks with the hope that they'll sell them alongside their phones. And the companies are interested. When GSMA published its report that mentioned 500 million mobile phone users who don't have grid access, it added figures from Digicel, an international carrier: 10 to 14 percent. That's how much more income per customer Digicel can make when its off-grid customers can charge their phones regularly.

Pilot testing for 20 or more ReadySet units begins this month in Uganda, and new add-ons are in development. The ReadySet is an open platform, modeled loosely after Apple's app store, in which anyone can build a compatible tool, such as a different kind of generator, an automatic cornhusker or LED lights, that plugs into the battery. Fenix may also work with other companies that are distributing solar LED lanterns and stoves and the technologies that can change the lives of the world's four billion people who earn less than $4 per day. Then, sometime in 2011, Fenix plans to sell the system in the United States. "There's a lot of interest from people who want a green, carbon-neutral digital lifestyle," Lin says. "It might be a trickle-up innovation. You can hop on the bicycle and power all of your electronics."

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