We thought you might like a sneak preview of the new Texenergy Infinite Air in action. In essence it’s a meticulously-designed miniaturised wind turbine that breaks down into a compact 430-gramme package and can charge an iPhone from empty in two to three hours.
The idea is that you can charge up your outdoor electronics – phones, GPS, head-torches, cameras etc – even in the absence of the sort of bright, direct sunshine that most compact solar panels rely on and tends to be a somewhat limited commodity in the British hills.
To see just how it works, we grabbed Texenergy’s Nikki Skinner and her whippet Archie, and headed out onto Kinder Scout on a relatively still day. First impressions are that the Infinite Air is pretty straightforward to put together from its component parts.
The cleverly-designed blades slot into slots in the head, then the whole caboodle mounts on the extendable mini-tripod. Dead easy even without instructions.
Three years of development work included crucial work on the polypropylene blades, which need to be shaped for a combination of effectiveness and strength and moulded to fit exactly into the generator head. The yellow tips deliberately echo the propellors of a WW2 Spitfire by the way and give you a fighting chance of avoiding an accidental hair-cut when things are spinning fast.
