Take A Look Overhead

Lithium batteries are so yesterday. A solar-powered backpack? Pfft, you’ll have to do better than that. If you really want portable power, and you want to look cool doing it, it’s the bat hook or nothing.

Sure, a device designed to be thrown over your head and into overhead power lines might not offer any new ways of generating electricity, but it sure is… dangerous. (Not really, according to the US Department of Defence, provided of course that you’re already a trained soldier.) And, given that it conducts power from the line by slicing into it with a small blade, it might not exactly be the most popular option among cities that don’t want their infrastructure being constantly cut.

Just the same: who wouldn’t want to power their laptop with something called a bat hook? If there’s anything comics have taught us, it’s that anything becomes at least 50 per cent cooler with the prefix “bat”.

As it happens, over 60 per cent of Canada’s electricity is produced using hydro, with fossil fuels coming in second at about 23 per cent. Once generated, that electricity is transmitted throughout the country on over 160,000 kilometres of high voltage lines. How you get that electricity out of the grid, though, is entirely up to you.

Via Popular Science

Image Warner Brothers