Solar battery chargers.

[Neil]

I did an advanced Google search of VFTT and came up empty regarding this subject although I would swear there was some discussion on it in the past.

Does anyone have any experience with solar battery chargers?

I would be charging a variety of electronics from a sat phone, palm pilot (or something analogous) digital camera, gps, headlamp, vidcam.

I suppose I would need to estimate my daily requirements in watts (or some other unit) and convert that into square footage of solar collectors while taking into account Latitude, time of year and average cloud cover.

I wonder if there is one member here who likes to sink his teeth into these sorts of problems?

 

[DougPaul]

Is this what you could't find?

Recharging batteries with solar panel in winter?
http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17763

Doug

 

[Neil]

Is this what you could't find?

Recharging batteries with solar panel in winter?
http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17763

Doug

Yeah, that's it. I wanted to revisit it.

I think the solution is to buy several different ones and do some scientific home testing.

 

[Paradox]

I received the Solio Hybrid 1000 as a Christmas gift. It did not have the ability to charge its own battery through my home windows over the course of 4 days. I then used the cheesy integral carabiner to clip it to my daypack and took it up Mt. Mansfield but unfortunately not back down. So the silly thing is lying up there somewhere on the Long Trail. Get to it before I do and claim it as salvage.

 

[Tom Rankin]

If this is what I think it's for, you might want to see if there are any crank-powered battery chargers available as well.

 

[Lou Hale]

Neil
www.pvwatts.org

you can find the approx solar radiation available for any given location. that would be a starting point to find out how many panels of a given size you would need

Paradox,
clear glass windows reduce solar radiation by about 20% most modern coated windows reduce it by nearly 50%. Solar panels lose a lot of efficiency unless they are in direct sunlight

Lou

 

[DougPaul]

you can find the approx solar radiation available for any given location. that would be a starting point to find out how many panels of a given size you would need

Rule of thumb: maximum solar intensity in the Arizona desert is ~1KW/sq-m.

PV cell efficiency is typically ~10-15% for inexpensive cells. (IIRC, the efficiency of the high efficiency cells gos up to the low ~20s, but the cost is much higher.)

Doug

 

[TomD]

I saw a mini wind powered charger for cel phones which also has a solar panel. The company is Hymini out of Taiwan. No idea if you can even find them. The website says sold out, but it is an interesting concept. It may turn out to be vaporware, so I would be wary of buying one online from the manufacturer.

www.hymini.com

Here is a story on it from some tech site. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/hymini_windpowe.php

 

[MichaelJ]

They make a solar charger for the Steri-Pen. It's a carry case for the pen, but even if you don't have one, it will charge any pair of CR-123 rechargeable batteries.