All Yill Photos: Steffen Jänicke, Berlin
You get to the office and manage to just avoid that chatty woman from accounting in the parking lot. Before heading to your desk, you stop by the charging station in the hall to pick up your assigned Yill and roll it to your cubicle. You sit down, plug your computer into it, and start checking your emails. A typical day in your near future?
A winner of a 2011 reddot design award, Yill is a mobile energy storage unit designed by Werner Aisslinger’s Berlin-based design firm Studio Aisslinger for Younicos a developer of storage systems and network solutions for electricity supplied from regenerative energy sources. (Make sure to check out both the Studio Aisslinger and Younicos sites — the designs are fantastic). Able to power a workstation for two to three days without cords or cables, Yill stores energy in a rechargeable lithium titanium battery, which Younicos claims is better than conventional lithium ion technology because it is safe, recharges quickly, and has a long operating life. It’s a power source you can take with you outside on a sunny day (that might have been powered by the sun). Can you roll with that?
