When LG showed off the Skycharger last week, your reporter was within earshot of two other press folk. All three saw the same huge device -- and each had an utterly different idea about what to do with a 104-port charger in a tent.

The practical and humanitarian thing to do with a charger that draws down solar and wind power is, one writer suggested, to take it to places where sun and wind are all you've got: disaster areas and the most rural regions of developing countries. Another writer noted that the 104-port carousel, with its locking cubbyholes, would be a nice incentive for students to leave their gadgets outside the classroom during the day -- the kids get a free charge-up, the teachers don't have to confiscate devices for in-class texting shenanigans.

But according to the keepers of the Skycharger, the person in our group who guessed "concerts!" is closest to understanding the current incarnation of the Skycharger, which debuted in America at CES 2009 and will tour the rest of the country throughout the year. The very first Skycharger -- the machine we saw was the second -- put in hard time last year at a variety of outdoor concerts and festivals.

From the concert-goer's point of view, the Skycharger's no more complicated than paying $15 for a bottle of water or finding parking. Locate the tent with the windmill on top, choose an open cubby with the proper connector for your phone (you don't need to bring your own charger), plug in, turn the key in the lock, take the key and don't lose it. (That last part may, admittedly, be complicated for some.) When you come back in an hour or so, your phone is charged.

On the tech side, the Skycharger -- sponsored on this tour by LG, but developed by Brit firm Gotwind (which introduced it at the Glastonbury music festival last year as the Pod Mk2) -- is considerably fancier. The system converts both solar and wind energy and stores it in its 6 24-volt batteries. It can power 104 gadgets, taking about 350 watts to run when fully loaded. The one-kilowatt wind turbine is 2.5m in diameter; just below the blades, there are eight 110w solar panels. A control panel monitors not only power generation and consumption but the weather available.

The device, which LG reps describe as an "eco-mobilization motivation piece" (translation: "it's cool to be green, it's cool to go to concerts, we want a piece of that"), is easy to put together and take down for transport purposes, but there's also some thought to keeping it safe from the rioting Bonnaroo hordes. Not only is the machine weighted to withstand winds of up to 50mph, it's staked 6ft into the ground to prevent tipping if the ground surface doesn't allow it to simply bolt down. Your reporter suggested she climb the Skycharger to test its stability; she was dissuaded.

Dave Pain, representing Gotwind.org under the Skycharger big top in Vegas, said that reaction to the first-gen version of the device was excellent -- concertgoers were, in fact, so frantic to get their phones into the charger that some attempted to bribe tent-keepers to stay up after hours. The charger, he says, has yet to run out of all-natural juice; in Vegas, for instance, the one day that wasn't sunny was windy. (A concert in Ireland, however, tested the gear thoroughly; it charged every device, he says, but it certainly ran the batteries below normal power levels.)

The other two press observers weren't however, entirely out to lunch about potential Skycharger deployments. In particular, it's possible that the Skycharger could be sent to disaster areas if requested; not the fun and frivolity of a good summer festival, but -- if the unfortunate circumstances were to arise -- a far more powerful message about the good green power can do.