The energy generating football

The Soccket

This year sees the FIFA World Cup come to the African continent as South Africa plays host to the biggest and most popular sports tournament in the world. Football plays a huge role in communities across Africa and it's hoped the World Cup can help South Africa's and the wider African continent's social and economic development.

But the humble football itself could turn out to be important in ways few could have imagined...

Four Harvard University engineering students have invented the Soccket - a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during play. When the sun goes down on the many poor, rural areas of Africa, communities rely on unreliable and dangerous Kerosene lamps, emitting hazardous fumes and generating 190 million metric tons of CO2 each year.

This ingenious invention takes advantage of the fact that football can be found in pretty every corner of even the poorest parts of the entire continent of Africa, which means that communities can power their way to a cleaner, brighter energy future through encouraging healthy activity.

Capturing and storing kinetic energy

InHabitat reports that the Soccket was designed for use in off-grid areas where electricity for interior lighting and charging cell phones is hard to come by.

The Soccket works in much the same way as the torches powered through shaking; by capturing and storing kinetic energy through an inductive coil mechanism. As the ball is kicked around, a magnet gets drawn through the coil creating a current that can then be stored in a battery.

Weighing almost the same as a regular football, just 15 minutes of play will generate enough electricity to light a small LED for three hours....OK, there's work that needs to be done but it's the first generation model and the students insist they can improve on its power generation capabilities.

The students are planning to use a 'buy-one-give-one model' to distribute the devices, selling them in Western markets to subsidize their distribution to those in need.

This is exactly the sort of thinking developing countries need if they are to join the rest of the world in switching to clean energy. But not only does it help cut carbon emissions, the Soccket benefits communities in others ways through participation in group activities which can only be a positive thing

Pictures courtesy of Soccket’s study of soccer play in Nairobi, Kenya

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