This Gadget Fits In Your Backpack & Powers A Campsite With Nothing But The Wind

As a tech enthusiast, no matter what situation I'm in, I'm always thinking about power. Whether it's installing a whole-home backup battery in my house or keeping a portable power station on hand to charge up my gear when I'm on the road, one fundamental truth remains — without power, all my gadgets and gizmos are nothing but expensive paperweights. So when I heard about a company called Aurea Technologies walking the show floor at CES 2026, I had to take the opportunity to meet with them.

The company's two co-founders developed and built the Shine Turbine 2.0, which is a wind-powered backup battery that fits into a backpack and can power your whole campsite if need be. Everything you need to power your devices is found within this compact unit. It's the size of a very large water bottle — not quite the size of a Stanley Thermos, but larger than a Kirkland brand water bottle for sure. The obvious benefit is that it can slip into most backpacks, and keep the lights on for you.

When we met on the show floor, co-founder Rachel Carr demonstrated the setup process. First, you open the device and remove the pole, stakes, and guy lines. Set those into the ground and test the turbine on top. 

Then, you extend the arms and tighten them down before securing the turbine on top of the pole. The turbine rotates itself into the wind, and that's it. There's a 12,000 mAh battery built into the device for power storage and a single USB-C port that can output at 75W, which is good to charge up most devices. You can also buy a separate adapter and use the turbine to charge larger power stations from the likes of Jackery or EcoFlow.

Shine 2.0 is designed to work in winds of up to 28 mph, which Carr noted was fairly common in her native Nova Scotia. The company provides estimates for how long it will take to charge up various devices in gentle breezes (around 8 mph) all the way up to a "rocking wind" of 28 mph. A typical smartphone can take anywhere from 12 hours in a gentle breeze, to 17 minutes in a strong wind. A laptop can take anywhere from 75 hours to just under two, again, depending on how strongly the wind is blowing.

Of course, in a gentle breeze, things are going to take longer, but one of the advantages to the Shine 2.0 turbine is the battery storage capability. You can leave the turbine up, day and night, to charge up before you need to plug in your devices. That's a key advantage over solar, which usually comes in two parts — the solar panel and the battery separately. Shine 2.0 is built into a single unit.

Speaking of solar, the obvious advantage is Shine 2.0's ability to work at all hours — day or night. The device also has an IP54 rating, which means it has dust ingress protection, and it can survive splashes of water too, which is more than a lot of portable generators can boast.

Of course, if you're in an area with little to no wind, this device will be of limited use, but it's fair to say most places will have some amount of air movement. Considering the device only weighs about three pounds, it's not a bad device to keep with you if you're heading off the grid for any amount of time. If this sounds like your sort of thing, you can preorder the Shine 2.0 on Indiegogo.