Tapping wasted energy
‘I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain,’ are the unforgettable lyrics to the 1950s American musical of the same name and the perfect accompaniment to the Tango Group’s water-pressure-powered shower radio, called H2O. The concept is simple: fit the radio directly to the faucet of your shower, turn on the water and the water pressure will turn a minute turbine generator to provide a free energy source for your radio. A built-in rechargeable battery ensures the music and news continue after the water is turned off.

Vivian Blick, the Managing Director of Tango Group, the company responsible for H2O, has previously worked with the English inventor Trevor Baylis on his Freeplay wind up radio. Blick says they were looking for ways to find alternative free energy, ‘so I started where energy was being used everyday and wasn’t being fully utilised, it quickly came down to water.’

Turbine generator
Blick says it’s all about turning waste into energy. ‘The toilet flush, the washing machine, the bath, the shower, watering the garden,’ he says, ‘the water is waste once it’s left the tap, or the hose pipe, or the cistern, so why don’t we tap into that? We built a small turbine to test it and the easiest application to get across to the public was attaching it to the shower and using the running water to power a radio. It was all about getting a free ride out of something you’ve already paid for!’

Blick has lots of ideas to develop his water-powered concept. ‘Next year,’ he explains, ‘the radio will incorporate an LCD display of the average temperature of the water, how many litres of water your shower has consumed and how much power the shower has cost, giving you a total bill for every shower you take. It’s a fun way to take a shower but educational as well.’

Water-powered recharging
He compares the concept’s growth cycle to the wind-up radio, ‘it doesn’t take a lot to get to the next stage, where people might consider charging their mobile phones from pumped water. How many times do you flush the toilet everyday? The water is coming in under pressure, in the minute or so it takes to fill up the cistern, you may get ten minutes worth of energy.’