Solar Powered Portable Charger
Is it worth it?
Economically
There are alternatives to our design, in the form of commercial products. Often times it's tempting to over-design a problem when a purchasable solution exists.
This example product from Amazon costs $30, is a mid to low-end product for what we're looking to use.
This example product on Ebay costs $13.29 and is one of the best portable solar chargers we could find.
This was the cheapest solar panel we could find online and costs $11.69 on Amazon. It produces a higher voltage output but less power than the panel mentioned above. While there are "cheaper" panels from China, they have to be bought in bulk and are not very portable.
The final cost would near around $13.69 since this panel would need at least 10 diodes to reach 5V.
Environmentally
On average, this product does very little at helping reduce carbon emission as, on average, phones only consume about 0.000228 KW per year. According to our research, Malawi yearly generates 362 MW of electricity so our reduced carbon emissions would be next to nothing. However, since this is tied in with the solar kitchen, which in it of itself drastically reduces carbon emissions. Based on report about how much wood is consumed time per meal, we learned that people in Malawi would use up 90 kg of wood per week. Using math learned during this course:
(1.9 kg CO2 / 1 kg of wood) * (90 kg of wood / 1 week) * (52 weeks / 1 year) = ~4680 kg of CO2 emitted
Seeing that the solar kitchen is aimed at eliminating the use of wood, this combined product would eliminate 4680 kg of CO2 and charge their phones at the same time. This is also good considering the fact that Malawi is now facing the perils of deforestation with there now only being about ~12,000 square miles left of forests for wood (26.4% of their total land mass).
Policy Considerations
In Malawi, there's strict regulations that requires individuals needing a license to of wood and charcoal. The solar kitchen would be a perfect solution to solve "illegal" selling of wood and charcoal as people would no longer need to buy wood and charcoal for cooking. The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (ESCOM) has also been trying to get more foreign solar household-level products as 90% of the population live off grid.