Look No Leads: How A Swedish Technology Will Revolutionise Consumer Electronics

Today a new cycle helmet will be launched in Stockholm, with an integrated light powered by solar cells. Carpeted in snow, dark at 17.00, the Swedish capital may not be the first place you associate with solar energy. Yet these solar cells are quite different from traditional solar technology, and this is no ordinary bike helmet.

Sports and safety brand POC’s new Omne Eternal helmet has an integrated light whose power comes entirely from ambient light, powered by deep tech company Exeger’s patented technology, Powerfoyle.

There are no leads, no plugs. All the helmet needs to charge is to be near ambient light – an LED, lamp or sunshine - for an hour or more a day. Even candlelight will do.  

For Giovanni Fili, the CEO of Exeger, it’s a dream come true, the culmination of 13 years of hard work.  POC’s helmet is the first product to come to the market using Exeger’s unique Powerfoyle material, manufactured in the company’s own factory on the edge of the National Park in Stockholm.

“This is the start of a new era,” Fili says. “Once people don’t need to charge appliances, they’re not going to go back to plugging a cable into the wall every evening. When you find something better, you don’t usually want to go back.” 

Powerfoyle’s solar cells enable electronic products to be charged from daylight and indoor light. It’s a versatile material that can be either rigid or flexible. In the factory, Powerfoyle is screen-printed to create the aesthetic properties of materials such as leather, plastic or metal.

Cells can be any shape or size and can be integrated seamlessly into any electronic device or appliqued with a logo or pattern. Indeed, they can be whatever a customer wants. 

So impressed was the Association of Swedish Engineering Industries that last year it awarded its Grand Design Award to Powerfoyle for its natural charging process. 

Naturally better

Charging batteries electronically drains batteries, shortening the life of consumer electronics, but with Powerfoyle, devices are likely to enjoy a longer life.

Currently Exeger has some six or so products under development including a set of headphones for the American audio equipment manufacturer JBL.

Ultimately, however, Fili expects Powerfoyle’s potential applications to extend far beyond consumer electronics and believes that it will help to accelerate the move away from fossil fuels. 

A study showed 3.4 billion consumer electronic devices consumed about 4%  of U.S. total electricity in 2017. American consumers spent $18 billion charging their devices. Cut that element globally, and it starts to make a difference financially and environmentally.

Moreover, there are still 770 million people across the world who don’t even have electricity, which raises a big question as to whether this can be sourced without increasing carbon emissions.

“We  will not be able to replace all this consumption,” Fili admits, “but we will be able to help replace fossil fuel with clean endless energy for millions of devices.”

For Fili, the launch of the first product using Powerfoyle has a particular emotional resonance. His great- great-grandfather, Per Magnus Carlberg, was one of a small group of  Swedish industrialists in the 1880s who financed the technology needed to transmit three-phase electric power. This is now the main method through which electrical grids transfer power.

The company that Carlberg helped to fund, which won the tender to build the transmission technology was ASEA, which later became ABB. Today, ABB robotics and industrial automation within Exeger’s Stockholm factory have enabled the company to scale up production, and which will be used in a second factory in Stockholm.

For Exeger’s patient long-term investors, including SoftBank and Swedish pension fund AMF, the launch of the POC helmet is an encouraging indicator. For Fili and his 140 colleagues, it’s proof that the technology they have believed in for so long is starting to help change the way we do things for the better.