Eccentric inventor of water tanks, condom packaging and furniture

BY REBECCA ZHOU
Thanks to Tom Fereday campers can now collect and store solar energy. He’s also developed a handy device for dealing with used condoms.
The 23-year old recent graduate from UTS is the mastermind behind the SolarStand, a portable solar panel designed to aide outdoor adventurers. The stand can be fixed simply with tent pegs or fitted onto tent rods.
“Portable solar technology exists already and is amazing but it’s so difficult to use,’ Fereday said. ‘I wanted to look into something that could just tie onto your tent while still being able to achieve the optimum angle to the sun that it needs.”
He has also designed a complicated method of cell alignment to increase energy output by 35 per cent.
In addition to this, the stand is compact and slots snugly into cylindrical, silicon solar panels. The panels roll up to a bundle no larger than your average sleeping bag.
The designer of this energy innovation is dressed head to toe today in black, with shoulder length, unstyled dark hair that’s tucked behind his ears. It’s a look that screams ‘bloody-minded artist’.
‘I do tend to get obsessive with things and just hermit for long periods of time,’ he said
He is probably not exaggerating. The Solar Stand took almost a year of thought, research and design.
‘I always wanted to do something with portable renewable energy use. I did a lot of research into outdoor expeditionary technology and at first I wanted to focus solely on extreme situations like the arctic,’ he said.
Fereday hasn’t always been quite so on the ball. He initially enrolled into a graphic design course at UTS. It was only after a year that he went into its brother strand, Industrial Design. And even then he was confused about what he wanted to do.
‘Graphic Design was just unbelievably boring. I realised suddenly that I needed to create something 3D so I stumbled into industrial [ design]’ but it wasn’t until a year into that that I finally figured out what it was all about.’
You know you’ve chosen the right course when you get to invent things like water tanks, condom packaging and furniture.
‘The condom packaging was an eccentric one, but I maintain that it would have been useful had I sold the idea better to my lecturers. Basically it’s to solve the problem people create by dumping used condoms and their packaging everywhere by creating resealable packaging.’
He concedes that it’s fortunate that as of late he’s decided to be more pragmatic and attuned to the needs of the day. A wise move on his part as he was recently granted a patent through UTS’s commercialisation partner Uniquest. But he remains skeptical on the product’s success, or just realistic, as he likes to term it.
‘It’s promising but not a guarantee of how well the product will be received. Hopefully it’ll attract enough interest in the outdoor leisure market.’