BANGALORE: Have you ever wondered that any discarded element of your gadget can become useful for someone else? If the reports from IBM India are to be believed then it is true that discarded laptop batteries can give power to the slums in India and other developing countries as it still have enough life in them to support the purpose.

The research presented by IBM at a conference in San Jose, U.S., analyzed a sample of discarded batteries and found 70 percent had enough power to keep an LED light on for more than four hours a day for a year. It is estimated that the 50 million lithium-ion laptop batteries discarded every year could provide electricity storage sufficient to light homes in developing countries.

According to MIT Technology Review, it is possible to combine LED lights with solar panels and rechargeable batteries; however, using discarded batteries could make the approach far cheaper.

One of the researchers named Vikas Chandan, a research scientist at Smarter Energy Group, “The most costly component in these systems is often the battery," said "In this case, the most expensive part of your storage solution is coming from trash," reports PTI.

The IBM group, working with a hardware R&D firm called RadioStudio, opened the discarded laptop battery packaging and extracted individual storage units called cells. They then tested those individually to pick out the good ones, and recombined them to form refurbished battery packs.

After adding charging dongles as well as circuitry to prevent overheating, they gave it to the five users in Bangalore who lived in slums or operated sidewalk carts. Three months later, the users said the battery packs had worked well.

This idea can turn out to be highly beneficial for the poor and orphan people out there in slum and still lack to get avail with the basic amenities of life like food and electricity. Moreover, it can be helpful providing the usage all over the world.

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