I'M NOT THE KIND OF GIRL who goes around peeing into batteries, but I'll give anything a shot. I'd been looking for ways to boot up life's little gizmos without plugging in. Here in northern New Mexico, Earthship capital of America, my lifestyle was starting to seem bourgeois. I don't brew my own biodiesel, I can't afford a solar water heater, and while my house runs partially on wind power from the utility company, it's not like I've got a giant turbine in the yard. If I couldn't unplug entirely, the idea of going renewable with just the small stuff seemed like a victory to me.

When I heard about NoPoPo rechargeable batteries, I was stoked. On the outside, these Japanese wonders look like regular AAs; on the inside, magnesium and carbon are supposed to react with any old liquid—water, milk, even, as bloggers gleefully pointed out, urine—to recharge. Perfect, I thought. I'll take them camping, and when my headlamp runs out I'll holler, "Ooohhh, honey, would you mind?" I mentioned the idea to my boyfriend, Win, delicately—after all, he'd be the one providing the manwater to run the things. He perked right up. "Do they run on blood?"

The NoPoPos look a lot like a Hello Kitty science kit. Sky, a friend of a friend living in Tokyo, had gotten me the goods—bright blue AAs and AAAs, packaged with a tiny plastic eyedropper for refueling. The instructions, which Sky had helpfully started to translate, were intimidating: BE CAREFUL! USE THE PROVIDED DROPPER AT ALL TIMES! But Sky abandoned the script fairly quickly. "Actually, it doesn't matter," he wrote, disgusted with the NoPoPo's anemic voltage. "These are only for your shitty LED light and pocket radio in a postapocalyptic world where the dead are the lucky ones and you wander in search of something to drink just so you can piss into your batteries one last time . . . "

Sky was right. Water, beer, bourbon—none of it worked. The NoPoPos did manage to illuminate (dimly) the little LED light in a headlamp for more than a month. But then I realized that I'd put an Energizer in there with them. The Bunny was doing most of the work.

I thought about going the DIY route. There's a Web site, HouseholdHacker.com, that says you can power your laptop with half an onion soaking in Gatorade—something about the electrolytes—but after a week of soaking, I couldn't get the onion to absorb even an ounce of Mountain Blast Powerade, and my dogs were looking at the blue potion suspiciously.

So much for the gimmicky home science. I was going high-tech. In the past couple of years, portable power devices for emergencies and travel have caught on—from tiny wind turbines to solar-paneled messenger bags, backpacks, and even a solar bikini (alas, just a prototype). On a spring camping trip on the San Juan River in Bluff, Utah, I loaded the car with all the alt-power devices and small appliances I could carry. Win and I would play Scrabble under the table lamp, I figured, fix margaritas in the blender, and, in the morning, fire up the Mr. Coffee. I'd wash my hair in the river ... and blow-dry it right in camp!

Strewn around our plot at the Sand Island campground were a solar backpack from Voltaic; a compact Solio charger that unfurled like a flower into three little photovoltaic panels; a tiny HYmini wind turbine that could attach to a bike or car; and two folding Brunton solar panels that connected to sturdy metal batteries. One, about the size of a deck of cards, could charge an audio player or phone. The second, a dictionary-size, 14.6-volt Portable Power Plant capable of running your laptop on Everest, was strong enough that it came with a set of wee jumper cables.

Excitedly, I plugged the hair dryer into the big Brunton. Nothing. Lamp, coffeemaker, toaster oven: No dice. But when I fired up the blender, the blades began to turn slowly. And stop. Whirr. Silence. Whirr. Silence.