For most of their history, rechargeable products were like sponges. You plugged them in, they absorbed electricity, and they held onto it until they sputtered out. They were passive creatures in our energy ecosystem—consumers, not contributors.

But something curious is happening in the marketplace today. We are entering an era where rechargeable products are no longer just sinks for power, they are also sources. A lantern doesn’t just light up—it charges your phone. A Bluetooth speaker doesn’t just play music—it becomes your backup power bank. Your e-bike battery can now top off your laptop, and your laptop, in turn, can charge your earbuds.

In short: power is no longer just consumed; it is moved around.

From Charging to Routing

Think of it this way: once upon a time, charging was a destination. You plugged a cable into a wall, and electricity flowed in one direction, into one device. Now charging is becoming a network, a circulation system where energy can flow wherever it’s most needed.

Power is becoming fluid.

• Your lantern sacrifices some runtime to keep your phone alive.
• Your laptop gives a little juice to your earbuds on a plane.
• Your e-bike, with its massive 500-watt-hour pack, acts as the camp’s microgrid.

The devices themselves haven’t changed that much. What’s changed is the mindset: we no longer see stored energy as locked into a single use. We see it as shareable, transferable, mobile.

The Cultural Shift: Energy as Community

This shift speaks to something deeper than gadget design. We live in a moment where resilience matters more than ever. Blackouts, storms, wildfires, supply chain hiccups, and geopolitical instability all remind us that the old model of “grid → outlet → gadget” is brittle. Consumers want options. They want their tools to be versatile, even redundant.

And so, every rechargeable product is being reconceived as part of a distributed energy web. Each one becomes a tiny node in a network, capable of both storing and sharing. A headlamp with a USB port isn’t just a novelty—it’s an acknowledgment that the energy inside it is valuable beyond its original function.

It’s the same psychology that makes electric cars so appealing when they promise “vehicle-to-grid” features. It isn’t just about driving anymore—it’s about being a generator on wheels. The same logic trickles down to camping lanterns and e-scooters.

Technology Made It Inevitable

Three things pushed us here:

1. USB-C Power Delivery standardized the language of charging. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phone, a flashlight, or a drone—if it speaks USB-C, it can both give and receive.
2. Battery management systems became smart enough to let devices discharge safely without bricking themselves.
3. Bigger batteries, cheaper cells. When your lantern has a 10,000 mAh battery, why wouldn’t you let it double as a power bank?

This isn’t just clever engineering; it’s the natural outcome of a world where the line between “appliance” and “battery” is vanishing.

What Comes Next

The trajectory is clear: soon, every rechargeable product above a certain size will have power out as a standard expectation. Just as “cordless” became the baseline in the 1990s, “bidirectional” will be the baseline in the 2020s.

• Priority-based routing: Devices may decide automatically which other devices get juice first. Your smartwatch might refuse to charge if your phone is below 5%.
• Energy ecosystems: Households will evolve their own webs of interconnected batteries, with energy constantly sloshing between devices depending on need.
• Normalization of redundancy: Power banks won’t go away, but they’ll be joined by dozens of other “backup” devices that just happen to live in your house already.

The Big Picture

The op-ed headline isn’t about lanterns and speakers—it’s about how we see energy. Once, electricity was a straight line: from the grid, to the plug, to the device. Now it’s a circle. Power gets passed, swapped, redistributed, shared. The act of charging is becoming less about filling up and more about routing energy.

That changes how we design, how we buy, and how we live. It means your everyday objects aren’t just tools; they’re energy assets. It means resilience becomes a default feature, not an upgrade. And it means that in a subtle, profound way, the way we consume electricity is starting to mirror the way we consume information—constantly in motion, constantly redistributed, constantly optimized.

Rechargeable products no longer just use power. They move it. And that is as big a shift as the moment when devices first cut the cord and went rechargeable in the first place.