Location: The Australian Wildlife Conservancy Mount Zero / Taravale Sanctuary. The Backpack’s owner is Jay Riedl, the Development Executive for Wildlife Australia Fund.

Location: Kwala, Tanzania

Solar Charges: A variety of devices, but cell phones were the most critical. The solar Messenger bag was used by SmallBean, a non-profit that brings electronics to citizens in diverse places to help them document their lives and communities. Photos from their citizen archivist project in Kwala are here.

Location: The half-pipe at Cypress Mountain at the 2010 Olympics

Solar Charges: AT&T Mythic phone, Samsung HMX-R10 camcorder and Samsung TL225 DualView Camera. Karl and Jeremiah are video makers with Kinetic Illusions and competing in a live-blogging contest with Samsung. They brought in Voltaic solar backpacks for a little extra edge against the competition.

Apparently a number of people commented that the bag was “the coolest thing they saw at the Olympics.“  We think this is great, but maybe they needed to see more events.

Location: Rural area of Les Cayes

Solar Charges: Blackberries and Walkie Talkies (both Mini USB adapters). Joshua from goodeater was part of a team conducting interviews with refugees from Port-au-Prince to assess their needs.

Location: Where: Sela (or Se pass), the mountain pass from West Kameng district into Tawang.  It is all in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in North East India.

Charges: The Oxford University Expedition Team used the Generator to power a 13″ MacBook Pro and their iPod Touch.

Location: Jacksonville, OR, home of our friends at Rain Tech who make rain water control products.

Charges: “I love this thing. I take it out in the field with me to keep my phone, camera and WiFi connection charged up.”

Charges: Cell phones and used in venom extraction (yes, that’s a first for us)

Location: South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Syria, Costa Rica, Fiji, Belize, USA and Bahamas. “Fell in the ocean in Mozambique and continued to work, around the world twice!”

Donald Schultz sports the Voltaic Solar Backpack in the fantastic new series on Animal Planet, Wild Recon. Watch the preview here.

Location: Mt. Acongcagua, Argentina — 13,300 to 18,000 feet

Charges: Acer Aspire One, Yaesu Radios, Sat phones “and of course iPods”

The Climb for Prostate team from British Columbia set out to raise over $100,000 for prostate research and climb one of the highest peaks in South America. Besides getting critical weather updates, having remote power for their netbook allowed them to blog and keep all their donors up to date on the trip.

Location: Arusha National Park in Tanzania, during a two-year volunteer assignment

Charges: Nokia N85 and PSP — “The backpack is great for emergency charging and just in general to charge my phone or psp when there’s power cuts (which is quite often).“

Charges: The iPhone that took this picture

Location: On the roof of the Long Island City, YMCA. Voltaic was privileged to take part in a pilot program for Cool Roofs in New York City. A crew of volunteers recruited through NYC Service painted a portion of the roof with special reflective paint designed to reflect the heat from the roof, reducing cooling costs and the heat island effect in the area. Energy bills and area temperatures (via satellite) will analyze the results.

The press release on the program is here. Thanks to the volunteer coordinator and the folks at Build it Green in Queens for a well-run event.

Location: A poster promoting a bank’s rewards program found inside the NYC subway. We found this amusing because one of our employees rides around Manhattan with a very cool Strida folding bike and of course a solar backpack, often this Converter with green panels. We are glad to be a source of inspiration for ad agencies.

solar charger in guatemala

Location: Parramos, Guatemala Northwest of Antigua

Charges: iPod, locally purchased LG phone and Kodak camera — “We spend a lot of time in the rural villages and are always on the road so the bag helps a lot.“

Location: Nimrod Fortress, see here

Charges: iPhone. Steve, graphic designer and web architect at Giant Jellyfish tells us his solar backpack “Kept my iphone going for a couple of days hiking and camping”

Location: John Boyd Thacher State Park, West of Albany, NY

Charges: iPod,  iPhone and multiple digital cameras of Doug (photographer) and Alyssa (featured) Rickert

Location: Pyramid of the Sun with the Pyramid of the Moon in the background in the city of Teotihuacán.

Charges: iPhone…“even though 2 phone calls cost me $4.”