Campus-wide Portable Battery Sharing

Can you imagine surviving even a single hour without your mobile phone? The multitude of emails, appointments, reminders, news and activity on social media have made mobile phones an indispensable device in our busy lives. What if your phone goes dead and you don't have your charger with you? Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it?

We’re PowerPass and we are trying to combine sustainability and our drive for improving campus life at UMass, Amherst. We came up with a unique system of borrowing power banks. We are in midst of building a walk-in solar powered kiosk that dispenses portable batteries for students to charge their phones on the go. Think about it - The feeling of low battery anxiety would be eliminated, and students would be more prepared for their business of education. We are doing all this by relying on a resource, which we have ignored conveniently for years - Solar Energy. 

A group of mechanical engineering students began building a proof of concept with their final semester at UMass, Amherst. The last thing we want to see is a project finished for the sake of a grade and left in the lab to pick up dust. Our goal is to work towards turning a class project into a well-equipped system for the campus community. With your support - We will be able to begin scaling up the current proof of concept produced by the graduating seniors. We are hoping to spend our summer on campus putting to practice what we learned in class to make something feasible. We hope you will become a part of our drive to push student innovation.

We would like to thank you all again for your generosity.