Soccket ball
Jessica O Matthews: the tech entrepreneur making renewable energy available for all"the Successful entrepreneurs often have an “a-ha” moment, and for Jessica O Matthews, it came at her aunt’s wedding in Nigeria. While guests celebrated, the power went out – typical for a country with unstable electricity service. When venue workers brought in diesel generators, the party resumed, but Jessica worried how unfazed everyone was about the toxic smell. “They’d all gotten used to it,” says Jessica, who was 19 at the time and a student at Harvard University. “And yet I knew a safer, more practical option existed.” Later, when brainstorming with friends, she thought of a renewable energy soccer ball that charges up as users play. Essentially it was an eco-friendly, portable generator that also serves as sports equipment. Three years later, in 2011, the resulting product, Sockket, helped Jessica launch her company, Uncharted Play (U-Play). Kids from all over and even two former US presidents – Barack Obama and Bill Clinton – embraced the ball and, later, a generator jump rope.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
sOccket is a soccer ball that generates cheap, clean, off-grid electricity when rolled. The sOccket ball captures the energy from impact that is normally lost to the environment when the soccer ball is kicked, dribbled, or thrown and stores this energy for later use. The project was created by Jessica Lin and three other female Harvard University students—Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar. They were inspired by dance floors that capture the energy of dancers jumping and moving around. The ball uses inductive coil technology--similar to flashlights that power up when shaken. Each 30 minutes of play with the ball generates enough power to light up an LED lamp for 3 hours, so a soccer game could easily provide light for a day. sOccket is producing its second round of prototypes and is working with working with a prototyping team and technical adviser associated with a new idea incubator at Harvard University. sOccket has been successfully piloted in Durban, South Africa. Early prototypes of the ball weigh just five ounces more than a regulation soccer ball, and their designs are getting lighter. sOccket plans to explore constructing the ball from materials local to Africa, as well as ball designs which will be durable in harsh conditions of dust, rain, and heat. sOccket has attracted several development funding grants and is now in the process of developing production and distribution partnerships.
In what ways is this project unique and creative?
sOccket is a truly creative and fun way to harvest power for use in resource-poor settings where access to electrical grids is limited or nonexistent.
What is the social value of this project?
In most African countries, 95 percent of the population is living off-grid with no access to electricity. With sOccket, people in developing nations will no longer need to walk 3 hours simply to charge their cell phones. The power will—quite literally—be in their hands. The sOccket ball can be used to light an LED lamp, or charge a cellphone or battery. sOccket will also benefit its users’ health: more than 1 billion people around the world rely on kerosene lamps to light their homes and businesses when the sun goes down. Not only is kerosene expensive, but its flames are dangerous and the smoke poses serious health risks. In fact, respiratory infections account for the largest percentage of childhood deaths in developing nations—more than AIDS, and more than malaria.
What is the potential of this project to expand and develop?
sOccket hopes to sell a high-end model for purchase in the U.S. and Europe using a “buy one-give one” offer to subsidize the cost of distributing sOccket in developing nations. In addition, profits will be used to distribute the balls at little or no cost in developing countries through organizations like Whizz Kids United.
What was the triggering factor of this project?
This project has been made possible because in Africa more and more people use LED lamps.
What is the business model of this project?
The busniss model is the soccket ball. You can find all the information you need above on this amazigly good website
darriussimps017@gmail.com,,+260971403393,,http://springwise.com/non-profit_social_cause/soccket/ http://www.soccket.com/
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