This Portable Wind Turbine Is the Size of a Water Bottle and Charges Devices in Under an Hour

Five years ago, a startup called Semtive Energy took the concept of a wind turbine, shrank it down to the size of a garden shrub, and started marketing it directly to households; much like rooftop solar panels, the mini turbine is intended to help homeowners rely less on the grid and produce their own clean energy.

Now another startup has taken a wind turbine, shrunk it down even more, and is marketing it to people who truly are off the grid—that is, hikers, campers, climbers, and others spending time in nature. Just under a year ago, Aurea Technologies launched a Kickstarter campaign for Shine, “an ultra-compact lightweight wind turbine that offers unrivaled performance for outdoor enthusiasts who need to recharge electronic devices.”

About the size of a 1-liter water bottle, Shine weighs 3 pounds, can be set up in under 2 minutes, and will provide power at wind speeds from 8 to 28 miles per hour. It looks a lot like a mini airship on a stick. Its maximum output is 40 watts, which isn’t much; the turbine seems primarily intended to charge phones, and wouldn’t be of much use for other purposes (though the Kickstarter page mentions laptops, cameras, drones, tablets, and lights).

The best use case is for people who are on long hikes or other outdoor adventures and want their phones on to take photos, use GPS, send texts, etc. Batter packs are the current backup power sources for these types of activities, which are smaller and lighter than the Shine turbine, but have a limited amount of juice. The mini turbine, on the other hand, can provide real-time power or store energy in its 12,000 mAh (milliamp-hours) lithium-ion battery. The battery can collect three phones’ worth of power in an hour when the turbine blades are rotating at full speed.

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