Posted by Danny London on 10/9/2025 to
Solar News
Inspiired by seeing homeless people on the streets of Glasgow struggling in cold temperatures, 13-year-old Rebecca Young, a schoolgirl from Glasgow, nvented a solar-powered heated blanket designed to help homeless people stay warm during cold weather. The invention is a heated blanket integrated into a backpack for easy portability. It uses solar panels to charge a battery during the day, which then power the heated blanket for up to eight hours at night. It also includes a control circuit to regulate temperature and conserve battery life..Rebecca's design won a competition (the Primary Engineer MacRobert Medal competition) and was developed into a functional prototype by the engineering firm Thales UK, which has manufactured and donated prototypes of the solar-heated backpack blankets to homeless charities in Glasgow, with plans for mre production.
Rebecca has received international recognition for her work, including being named one of **Time magazine's inaugural "Girls of the Year"
