I need a solar cell charger recommendation...

by **elricfate** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 1:11 pm

Mmmhmm.

And finally:

by **reppans** » Mon Jun 25, 2012 4:16 pm

Powerfilm is another option -

A third the size and weight, but half the efficiency as the GZ.... However in less than ideal conditions, it's twice as efficient.

by **Lycosa** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:04 am

Great advice and great pics too! Thanks for taking the time to help me out. Unfortunately, other RL issues came up and I will not have the extra fun-money until next month, but I've got some good info now to make the right decision.

by **sarky** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:58 pm

Reppans, what is that head lamp in the photo?

by **reppans** » Thu Jun 28, 2012 8:43 pm

sarky wrote:Reppans, what is that head lamp in the photo?

http://www.zebralight.com/H51w-Headlamp-AA-Neutral-White_p_46.html

by **ITZombie** » Sat Jun 30, 2012 9:05 am

http://www.amazon.com/Instapark%C2%AE-P ... +panel+10w

We have one of these. It works very well, high quality construction, good sewing and multiple hanging loops for attaching to whatever is handy. Monoscrystaline cells so barring breakage it should be good for a couple of decades at least.

It will charge an iphone or ipad without having to have a secondary battery like many do where the battery charges the device and the panels charge the battery back up. We've tested it with 3GS's, but just going by what other people have said regarding the ipad.

It'll charge 2 Galaxy S2's in full sun about the same speed as attaching them to a usb port on your computer, i.e. a 3-4 hours.

It has a built in pocket for holding a couple of usb cords and some 550 for hanging. It has two built in USB sockets.

We don't have any long term experience with it, but casual use over the few weeks haven't given us any reason to complain about it.

by **PackLemming** » Sat Jun 30, 2012 10:59 am

Some crazy glue and the hook from hook'n'loop material and you can have solar portable energy discretely with you on your treck.

by **Benny** » Thu Jul 26, 2012 10:41 pm

I've had nothing but rotten performance with my Goal Zero Nomad 7 and Goal 10 battery pack. I have yet to have it charge a cell phone successfully. An awful lot of blinking and heating has happened, but not so much on the charging.

I've RMA'ed the Nomad 7, no change.

I've RMA'ed the Goal 10, no change.

I've replaced the batteries in the Goal 10. No change.

I've talked back and forth with their support folks, and it has boiled down to "well, it works for us." My response continues to be "well, after 7 hours of 100% sunlight in freakin' Missouri, it doesn't work worth a shit."

They've been super nice, and tried to be helpful, but geez... In my opinion, their products suck. "Does not work as advertised."

by **74 or more** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:07 am

Has anyone ever used one of these Brunton panels? They both say they charge well in low light and overcast which sounds awesome.

http://www.amazon.com/Brunton-Flexible- ... nton+solar

http://www.amazon.com/Brunton-Solaris-F ... POBMODVQTA

by **CorpsmanUp** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 8:32 am

Here's my solution. Going to work on making it more rugged. Panel is very robust as is.

Allows me to store ~10,000 mA capacity for charging my gadgets. Less than $100.

https://plus.google.com/photos/11820088 ... laGJ_r7LTA

by **williaty** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:44 pm

74_or_more wrote:They both say they charge well in low light and overcast which sounds awesome.

Any time you hear this, that's an instant red flag that the stuff you're looking at was written by the marketing department, not anyone that really does solar. Remember the old solar LCD calculators? You could kinda use them inside under a desk lamp but the screen got all fadey and sometimes they did weird things. Technically, that solar panel in them worked under just a desk lamp. In reality, the thing could barely go. That's the truth about all solar panels as well.

Fundamentally, they turn sun power into electricity. If the amount of solar radiation drops, the amount of electricity drops, no matter what technology is being used. So when you put a panel into the shade, or near dusk, there's really nothing technology can do about the fact that there's less power landing on the panel. Think about looking directly into the sun and then looking into deep shade. Big difference, right? That's the same difference the panel sees. Even if we're talking about a cloudy sky or "open shade", the truth of the matter is that, although your eyes adapt and lie to you, the amount of solar energy there is tremendously less than in direct sun. You can't make that up with fancy technology.

by **74 or more** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:51 pm

williaty wrote:
74_or_more wrote:They both say they charge well in low light and overcast which sounds awesome.

Any time you hear this, that's an instant red flag that the stuff you're looking at was written by the marketing department, not anyone that really does solar. Remember the old solar LCD calculators? You could kinda use them inside under a desk lamp but the screen got all fadey and sometimes they did weird things. Technically, that solar panel in them worked under just a desk lamp. In reality, the thing could barely go. That's the truth about all solar panels as well.

Fundamentally, they turn sun power into electricity. If the amount of solar radiation drops, the amount of electricity drops, no matter what technology is being used. So when you put a panel into the shade, or near dusk, there's really nothing technology can do about the fact that there's less power landing on the panel. Think about looking directly into the sun and then looking into deep shade. Big difference, right? That's the same difference the panel sees. Even if we're talking about a cloudy sky or "open shade", the truth of the matter is that, although your eyes adapt and lie to you, the amount of solar energy there is tremendously less than in direct sun. You can't make that up with fancy technology.

Thanks for the info. I am by no means an expert on solar energy.

by **kaligaran** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:55 pm

Goal Zero here after a lot of research on solarfilm and brunton. Happy with the purchase.

My nomad 7 charges AAs in a copule of hours in full sun. The indicator always works perfectly for me, it goes from red to blinking slow green, then fast blink green then solid green.

by **Finch** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:06 pm

I have 2 guide 10s that I take with me flying frequently. They are very handy.

I also have a nomad7 ... Just in case.

It's a meet product. However I would recommend buying them locally. They seem to have some "infant mortality" and I had a clusterfuck of an experance trying to a broken out of the box guide 10 replaced. I should add that they did make it right and are a solid company.... Even if they are a little "granola"

by **slannesh** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:39 pm

I haven't got as far as a solar panel yet but I did start on a 'portable USB power' project.

It's a bit more modular than the all in one packs that have been set up here and I pilfered an idea here and there, but I think it'll work very well for me.

The thing I didn't like about the goal zero was the specs on the Guide 10 as a battery pack weren't great, you only get 2000mAh at 5V out of the 4 2000mAh batteries. Lithium Ion batteries have way more power for the weight so I set off in search of a USB rechargeable battery pack and found this which I paired with an eneloop USB charger:

5000mAh and I bought two very similar ones so I have a total of 10000mAh in a pretty small package. This will allow me to hook the depleted one up to a solar panel or other USB power source to charge while the charged one charges some batteries, cellphone, iPad or whatever. I'm still contemplating the Nomad 7 panel since it seems to have the best stats for the price but I noticed that Coleman has a very similar panel for about half the price. I'm going to try to snag one of those first which will put the total bill for my Panel, both battery packs and the eneloop charger at about $130. Which is still considerably less than the $160ish that a Guide10+ adventure kit would cost me after shipping.

**EDIT**

Decided to check the store that carries the Coleman panels at lunch and they had one left. So much for calling me when they came in

At first glance it's VERY similar to the Goal Zero one. same outputs, same wattage. But it looks like slightly cheaper materials in the build process. I'll test it out this weekend at the lake and see how it goes.

So as of 10 mins ago I suppose I no longer need a recommendation

All prices are Canadian $$

7.5w solar panel $50
2x 5000mAh battery packs ~$50
Eneloop USB charger with 2 AA Eneloops $18
Shipping for battery packs and eneloop charger ~$10

All in for about $130 plus tax and I have a system that has double the capacity of the Orange Joos at a little over half the cost and equivalent solar capacity and 5 times the battery pack capacity of the Guide 10+ adventure kit at 2/3 the cost. Can't say i'm disappointed with that.

by **slannesh** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 10:48 am

Did some testing while out at the lake this weekend.

It seems that this puts out a bit more than the stated 500ma. I was able to get the stated amperage just laying on the table

Wattage was a touch higher than necessary for 12v stuff.

But when I played with the angle a bit I got better results. Considering this thing is the size of an opened paperback novel I was impressed.

I did see 0.85 amps at one point but wasn't able to get it to read that again so it may have been an anomaly. Granted this was just at about 11am and while a nice clear sunny day I didn't put much effort into getting every possible amp out of the sun. It was easy to exceed the half amp stated power and it did charge both of my batteries well. They did a lot of duty over the long weekend charging phones, ereaders and my wife's iPad. All in all I am very happy as the system does exactly what I wanted it to.

by **williaty** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 3:28 pm

OK, bear in mind that I've only been awake like half an hour so this may not be as coherent as it really ought to be :lol:

The results you're getting are largely an artifact of the way you're measuring them. First, your meter, when used in series to measure current, should represent a vanishingly low resistance. In other words, making the measurement the way you did is roughly equivalent to shorting the two leads from the panel into each other. This is how the Isc (current, short circuit) spec for the panel is taken. Isc will always be a little bit higher than Imp (current, maximum power), which is what most companies that don't give you a full spec sheet will tell you. Second, your meter, when used in parallel to measure voltage, represents and extremely high resistance. Since you don't have the tips of the panel wires connected to a load, you're measuring Voc (voltage, open circuit). Voc will always be higher than Vmp (voltage, maximum power). Vmp is usually what a vendor will tell you if they don't give you a complete spec sheet.

Now, the second thing you're showing here is why solar charge controllers are usually necessary. You're right, hooking that up to a 12V nominal battery is potentially not good due to the fact that 16-ish volts is far too high. With a tiny panel like that, the battery will usually survive it due to the fact that the maximum current is so small that the panel usually can't fry the battery even though the voltage is way too high. The key part of that sentence, though, is "usually". With anything more than a handful of watts, the maximum potential current is high enough to definitely fry a battery, so a charge controller is absolutely necessary. The nice thing is that very small but high quality charge controllers start at about $30 and rise slowly as their current handling capability increases.

by **slannesh** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 4:44 pm

williaty wrote:OK, bear in mind that I've only been awake like half an hour so this may not be as coherent as it really ought to be

*snip* for stuff that you can read directly above

All good to know, thanks! I'll have to jury rig something to test the values when it's under load and see how it compares. Perhaps i'll get really ambitious and do a video review or something.

I did know that the numbers would differ somewhat when under load vs just an open circuit but didn't think which value the manufacturer would use, I assume that normally it would be the open circuit since it makes the product look better.

In any event I was happy with the results especially considering the cost and size, I had a 5.5 watt panel several years ago that was lucky to put out 300ma in full sun and it was probably 4x the size and 3x the cost.

by **angelofwar** » Thu Sep 06, 2012 11:08 pm

I like my goal zero Nomad-7 so much, I bought a second. Very little I can't power with these things...and the modularity is awesome! When the suns down, I can use the charged AA's or AAA's to power flashlights, radios, CB's, etc. Awesome gear, well worth the price!

by **adv** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:23 am

Good thread guys, me tag it.

by **funkychicken** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 1:04 pm

I have a Solio Rocsta-i. It is great in my book because of it's versitility with charging a meriad of different electronics. The solio products use the "I-Go" connectors so what ever you want to charge there is a connector for it. I have a micro usb, mini usb, and an ipod connector for mine. The charging cable has a connector holder that holds two of your favorite connectors. You can charge it via the USB port or solar, and it will hold a charge for up to one year. I can charge my phone twice without recharging the internal battery or both my motorola fmrs radio's.(one at a time). The solar panel may not be the biggest but I have never been without a charge on any electronic while camping or just walking around town. The carbiner is great for hooking to a belt loop or to the backpack. The power button also show the charge level in green flashes and show red while charging the internal battery. All in all I am happy with it. I know there are much more expensive one out there that can do a lot more like charge aa and aaa batteries etc. But for the electronics I usually pack and use it works great.
Here is a link for the Solio Rocsta-i:
http://www.outdoorsolarstore.com/solio-rocsta-usb-charger.aspx?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=googlebase&cvsfa=2098&cvsfe=2&cvsfhu=3631&gclid=CJ__iNGCpLICFQeCQgodsDQAJA

by **omega_man** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:38 pm

Just so it's not forgotten...the Joos Orange solar panel is the best out there. I even use it home to charge our Ipad, phones, and batteries.

by **elricfate** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:34 pm

omega_man wrote:Just so it's not forgotten...the Joos Orange solar panel is the best out there. I even use it home to charge our Ipad, phones, and batteries.

Finally someone else with one who knows how awesome they are.

by **slannesh** » Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:36 pm

elricfate wrote:
omega_man wrote:Just so it's not forgotten...the Joos Orange solar panel is the best out there. I even use it home to charge our Ipad, phones, and batteries.

Finally someone else with one who knows how awesome they are.

I never said it wasn't awesome, just that being in Canada made it much less attractive due to the cost.

It's one rugged little bastard that's for sure. I loved seeing Omega's on his SSMBO, in fact I think that's what prompted me to pull the trigger on my setup.