Solar Chargers

[Univeros]

Has anyone got or used these portable solar chargers, such as the one below, are they any good? Can you recommend any?

http://www.silva.se/templates/Products____95.aspx?epslanguage=EN&productId={A5BF6140-CFAE-49A0-83AE-3C156B2E8F33}

The only decent one i found, but also expensive...

[Britboy]

Not used it personally, but a mate used an Ipod charger whilst we were abroad volunteering. It was the one with three 'petals' that fold out like a flower with photovoltaic cells on them. They thought it was pretty useless and not worth the cash even for charging an ipod up, despite the fact we were in a tropical country. Well, it was the wet season for some of the time as well, I suppose.

Have you thought about a hand-cranked generator? Apparently you can get them for mobiles and they used to be used for mil radios 'just in case', so perhaps there's one which charges AAs or similar, or can be modified to... My clockwork-dynamo radio works pretty good.

[Frens]

check brigadeqm.com for a hand-cranked generator

[Waterman]

I have tried a couple (Brunton, Solio) and found them not up to the task, unless the panels were left out ALL day long. Which is fine if you are stationary....but if on the move (and the glass in a car window blocks some of the sunlight it gets)....grrrr.

The iPod barely moved up in power, even after a couple of hours (while turned off), the cell phone fared a little better but not much (it was turned off as well). The laptop got just enough juice to keep from shutting down, but it didn't charge the battery at all.

Considering that any of these items would charge in a car or home charger in about 2 hrs....the performance left much to be desired.

I think the panels currently available are not up to the task of quickly powering up today's power hungry toys and tools. Maybe as the technology improves (as is usually the case when demand rises) we will have something soon that will do a better job. Maybe in a post-distaster type setting where you would be super happy to have anything working at all, the waiting all day for them to charge wouldn't be so bad (and you might be sitting around a lot anyway). But to try to keep vital electronics charged while away from the usual sources of electrical power, these left much to be desired. You could not just set them up after a half day's hike and expect them to be charged with just a part of the day to get them powered up.

[AROUETLJ]

http://www.thehikingzone.com/SOLAR_POWER-Solaris_12_Tri_Fold_Solar_Array.html