Sun-powered phone charger gives migrants free electricity in Greece

For refugees and migrants stuck in Greece, a smartphone is a lifeline - as long as its battery lasts.

But access to electricity can be hard to find in overcrowded camps, nor is it always free in cafes where young and old crowd together over a socket, waiting anxiously to phone home. A team of students from Edinburgh University is hoping to change that, having designed a mobile phone charging station powered only by the sun - something Greece has plenty of.

They have installed two units in camps, each configured to generate electricity for 12 plugs an hour using solar energy alone, providing free power to as many as 240 people per unit each day, Reuters reports.

The idea was borne out of a visit last summer of one of the founders, 20-year-old Alexandros Angelopoulos, to the island of Samos, one of the entry points into Europe for nearly a million people fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.