Greener Gadgets: SunNight eyes powering radios with flashlights

Even a universal power supply couldn't support other devices for very long in the wilds of Africa, where there's a total absence of electrical wiring for charging up. But SunNight's flashlights, which combine solar power with nickel hydride batteries, are already powerful enough to entirely light a good-sized room, said SunNight CEO Mark Bent, speaking on Friday at Greener Gadgets Expo in New York City.

Texas-based SunNight sold about $1 million in ultra long-life flashlights in 2007. About 30% of the lights are now sold directly in Africa, while another 30 percent are distributed through humanitarian groups. The remaining flashlights go to other destinations, ranging from police forces around the world to US retail chains like Target.

Essentially, SunNight's product works by converting captured sunlight into energy, which is then stored in three AA nickel hydride batteries housed in the flashlight.

"We are changing the world, one flashlight at a time," Bent quips on SunNight's Web site.

In his appearance at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)-sponsored Greener Gadgets Expo last week, the CEO suggested that flashlights can play critical roles in remote rural locations such as African villages, which would otherwise be dark at night except for glimmering rays of campfires, moonlight and starlight and maybe a few old kerosene lamps.

Bent told of one young man in Africa who used a SunNight flashlight to do his high school-level homework in preparation for enrollment at a university. When the man later went back to the village to visit, he found that his old friends were still herding goats.

In their latest generation, SunNight's products double as flashlights and room lights, emitting enough light to fully illuminate a room measuring about 12 feet by 12 feet.

Bent said on Friday that SunNight is now looking into ways of using the flashlight to connect to and power other devices, such as radios and possibly even a yet to be developed "bug-zapping" mechanism for protecting the population against malaria.

SunNight has innovated in other respects, too. Bent noted that some of the African villages receiving the flashlights have tended to assign use of the lights mainly to adult males. His company arrived at a clever and workable solution to that problem, as he told the audience: "That's why some of our flashlights [now] are pink."